Читать книгу Moss Rose - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 5

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"I ought to have the waltz in the pantomime," complained Minnie Palmer. "I look better in pink, too. Say, please, that I ought to have the waltz!"

She stood in the wings, breathing hard, clinging to the arm of the tired stage manager who leant against one of the roughly painted boards that was daubed to look like a tree..

"You do fine and well as you are, don't you, Missus?" He had been playing the clown in an earlier turn with the ventriloquist and his face was still streaked with red and white.

"Pretty well, but Belle's no good—and that's such a sweet, pretty tune." She hummed a bar of "Moss Rose."

"Please now—Belle's more like a lily, I'm sure."

He laughed so loud that she was startled: "We'll see in the morning, Missus. Belle's a fine dancer as I think, and 'Moss Rose' is her style—genteel and dainty. You can see that she's a lady."

"Do you think that's what they want? Genteel indeed! Why doesn't she go where she belongs if she's a lady—a real, high-born lady?"

"The more's the pity if she's a lady, Missus. But, I'd have to ask Mr. Lode about changing parts, and it's getting late and damned cold, so be off with you. Besides, this is the last performance before the pantomime and I don't know as the ballet will go into 'Puss in Boots' even now."

Belle passed them as they were talking; she had been lingering at the back of the darkened, draughty stage where, without the lights and the music, the scene before which she had danced was merely tinfoil paper, dirty rags and chalked canvas. An odious spot, but less odious than the streets; a smell of sawdust, oranges and stale beer came from behind the drop-cloth that formed the background for the juggler.

She knew at once that they were discussing her and that Minnie Palmer was trying to get the "Moss Rose" dance for the pantomime which opened on Boxing Day. Perhaps they would turn her out of "Puss in Boots" for which she had been engaged; she was not very successful and they would be glad to save the thirty shillings a week. Even if they allowed her to stay she would not get another engagement easily afterwards; she could not please, no, never had she been able to please a crowd—nor even single individuals, "save a few, and they are lost." Failure everywhere, failure. "Genteel and dainty," she had heard the miserable Figg call her, and yet any coarse fellow, drunk on bottled porter or gin, would pass her by for Minnie Palmer.

"What am I thinking? I am tired, tired out. If only I had some more drink or some opium, and a little poison to put in it, so that I could sleep and never wake again."

When she returned to the dismal little dressing-room, screened off so carelessly from the piled-up properties and the green room, she found that the three girls with whom she shared it had left the theatre, but that Daisy Arrow was waiting for her.

"Oh, you!" Belle tore off the green cap, the wig. "Why do you come here pestering me?"

"I want the pink feathers, my pet. Minnie told you, did she? I'm going out to-night."

"Where?"

"Oh, the Argyll Rooms or the Alhambra, anywhere there's a bit of fun."

"You're a fool," said Belle with an emphasis of her detached air of cold ease. "Who will you find to-night? A fog, cold Christmas Eve—and those feathers aren't for the winter—they'll seem silly a night like this."

"Maybe they'll make someone look at me—Belle, if I find—"

"Stop—you know I won't hear of these things—from you. Be quiet. Why should I give you the feathers? They're fresh and clean, aren't they? I'm keeping them for the summer."

"I'll pay for them to-morrow, if I have any luck. I suppose you'd like a couple of shillings, my love?" Daisy Arrow spoke flatly without wheedling or insolence. "I heard from Min that they didn't like your dance—'Moss Rose' is so sweet, too. The Lord Harry knows what they do want. Come with me to the Argyll, Belle, dear."

"Why?"

"We might pick someone up. Oh, don't stare at me with that sneer; maybe I'm not good enough for the back row of the ballet—but I might find some fool—drunk enough."

"Did I say I wouldn't have any of your nasty talk?"

"What's the use of being so hoity-toity?" Daisy Arrow spoke without hope or anger. "If you won't come, well, lend me your feathers."

"A night like this! No. No one but a drab would wear pink feathers in the street in a fog."

"No one but a drab would be in the street, would she—dearie—a night like this?" Daisy Arrow spoke in the same quiet tone. "They won't have me for the pantomime—it's remembered against me that I'm not strong and cough, and sometimes faint. I've got one and three-pence and I owe Mother Bulke fifteen shillings."

Belle Adair stripped off her stage clothes until she stood in her broken stays and faded petticoat, a beautifully shaped woman with exquisite arms and shoulders. Her hair, flattened and greasy from the wig, was dark, the colour of a dried bay-leaf, and was fastened in a knot at the base of her neck; her face, on which the paint flared and melted, was pinched, faintly distorted.

"Ma Bulke wouldn't turn you out, Christmas Eve. And if she did?—What's before either of us? As well now as tomorrow, or the next day."

"You'll speak different when you've a drain inside you. Make haste, it'll soon be too late for anything." Daisy Arrow sat up. "I'm hungry."

She was a delicate-looking woman who had been lovely; her hair was a magnificent chestnut-copper hue and contrasted finely with the exquisite outline of her small features. Her throat was long and graceful, but her complexion was blotched, her teeth broken and her large dark eyes injected with blood, while her wide lips were ragged and shapeless. Beneath her cleverly worn Cashmere shawl, threadbare and smelling of the cleaner's resin and sulphur, showed a dark skirt with carefully mended flounces and thin-soled boots, varnished over the cracks. On the knot of her sumptuous hair was a faded bonnet of green taffeta that emphasised her shabbiness; her air was one of lassitude and fatigue.

Belle Adair glanced over her, then pulling open the cupboard, took out from beneath the white gauze skirt, in the pocket of which was the empty gin bottle, a lidless cardboard box; in this, wrapped in silver paper, was a plume of curled ostrich feathers of an unusual tint of livid pink. Why she had kept and treasured this scrap of finery when all else had gone, Belle did not know; she had worn it on the stage once when she had played a super's part of a society beauty at a fête of pasteboard grass and paper flowers. She kept it at the theatre as the other women at Mrs. Bulke's would always be wanting to borrow it, and even here it was not safe; even Daisy Arrow had to remember and come after it. Belle glanced at the dirty knife by the red herring and the curling, glistening strips of ham fat, and smiled. How odd that she was concerned with this worthless piece of rubbish, she who had been about to make herself ready for a pauper's grave. She flung the plume on to the dressing-table.

"Take it—and go away."

With a flash of animation that made her appear quite charming, Daisy Arrow snatched the feathers; the mount was garnished by a cluster of dried grasses and the iris-hued head of a bird of paradise. With a skilful hand the young woman, peering into the scrap of mirror, arranged the plumes at the side of her bonnet and pinned it into place so that the rosy fronds fell becomingly on to the lustrous hair.

Belle, huddling into her dark street clothes, studied her keenly, curiously.

"I wonder what you've been in your time, Daisy Arrow? And what your name really is, or how it is that you're quite so friendless, wretched and desperately poor?"

"I suppose, my pet, I could put all these questions to you and get no answer. What does it matter?"

"You're right—what does it matter? But you're a little better than the others," retorted Belle with her dry, casual ease. "I should say you'd had some education. Shall I take this umbrella? No, it's foggy, not raining, and the cover is full of holes—yet I've no other shawl, and if this were to get sodden...I ought to have used the knife."

"You're a rum 'un," said Daisy Arrow, pulling out her curls under the bright feathers. "The things you think of! Come to the Argyll Rooms and you'll forget about umbrellas and shawls—and the foggy night." She peered closer with a sudden keenness at the other woman: "Used the knife? What do you mean?" She put her hand across her throat and as Belle disdained to answer, added: "I see—well, here's temptation out of the way, dearie." She picked up the coarse clasp-knife, shut it, and slipped it into her beaded reticule. "I'll throw it away—"

"Get along or you'll be late," said Belle, watching her without comment on her action.

Daisy Arrow rose; she had a certain art in arranging her worn clothes that made her look quite elegant; the fantastic feathers did not appear unsuitable on that well-set burnished hair; she peered at herself in the mirror, turning her head gracefully over her shoulder.

"You think that I look like a lady, do you?" she smiled.

"No, you are just lady-like, genteel. I dare say you were a gentlewoman's maid or in a small shop—haberdasher's, milliner's, or something like that."

For a second Daisy Arrow looked startled, then her weary indolence dropped over her like a veil.

"Well, it ain't no good for us to pry into each other's past, is it, dearie? They all say that you're a real born lady—but that hasn't helped you much, has it?"

"No, I'm as nasty a slut as you are, or as Minnie Palmer is, or as Mrs. Bulke herself. I'm turning out the gas before old Bobs comes in, scolding and swearing."

Daisy Arrow pulled open the door.

"Well, wish me good luck, my pet."

"Good luck," said Belle, and as the other young woman drifted away into the darkness beyond the door, she added listlessly: "What good luck could you have, save to drop into the earth—easily, quickly?"