Читать книгу The Anxious Days - Philip Gibbs - Страница 17

Table of Contents

Madge was not yet back at eight o’clock, but he was received very cordially by Jean Macgregor, the red-headed girl. She was busy frying sausages and potatoes in a diminutive kitchen, as she explained when she opened the door from which a rich aroma of boiling fat came forth.

“Come and have a look at the feast I’m preparing for you,” she said.

Commander Compton went to have a look, hiding his disappointment that Madge was not at home yet.

“My word, they look good!” he said, quite sincerely, at the sight of the sausages sizzling in a frying-pan over a small gas-stove.

“Done to a turn!” cried Jean Macgregor proudly. “Did you ever see such beauties? But, of course, Madge won’t be here to eat them. Well, the more for you and me, that’s all.”

“What makes you think she won’t be here?” asked Compton anxiously.

Jean Macgregor smiled as she wiped a plate on her blue apron.

“I fear the worst, and it nearly always happens when I prepare a meal for actresses, journalists, and other disorderly creatures who keep uncertain hours. Many a time have I waited for Madge with my mouth watering over a Welsh rarebit.”

The worst happened almost immediately. The telephone bell rang, with a message from Madge.

“Frightfully sorry! I can’t get home till nine o’clock. Give my love to Father and be kind to him, my dear.”

Jean Macgregor repeated the message word for word, not without sympathy when she saw the disappointment in the eyes of an elderly gentleman.

“Awful, isn’t it? But you can rely on my kindness. If you’ll carry in those sausages, I’ll follow with the bread and things. No use letting them get cold, the darlings.”

“Tell me more about Borneo,” she suggested when she sat down to this evening meal.

Compton let her off Borneo, and conversation languished a little now and then, until Jean brightened it up by an account of a play she had seen the previous evening. Then he helped her to clear away before she sat down to the table again and went on with a design she was doing for an advertisement of somebody’s bath salts.

“Don’t mind if I work?” she said. “Needs must when the devil drives. But I can prattle while I put in this lady’s legs. And I’m a very good listener, if you feel like talking. There are heaps of cigarettes in that tin.”

Compton felt at ease with this matter-of-fact girl, who made no fuss about him but seemed to accept his presence without annoyance.

“How do you get on with Madge?” he asked presently.

She told him that she got on with Madge “like a house on fire”, though that simile seemed hardly suitable. She said that Madge filled her with admiration and envy. She just went about looking beautiful and everybody worshipped her. It was unfair really, she thought. A girl like herself, with red hair and freckles, had an uphill job. Advertisement agents gave her no special favour. They were rather put off by her repulsive appearance, whereas they would accept any bit of bad drawing from a pretty girl who made eyes at them.

Commander Compton would not pass that word “repulsive”. He assured her that if he were an advertising agent he would accept her drawings on the spot. He thought freckles were attractive.

“Kind man!” said Jean Macgregor.

She spoke about Madge again.

“It’s a pity she doesn’t marry and have babies. There’s nothing in acting really. I know dozens of girls who get small parts and then fade out. I’m afraid Madge will have the same experience when that man Keening meets another girl with a different type of beauty. Far better if she puts one of those boys out of their misery, don’t you think?”

Commander Compton was cautious, and asked, “What boys?”

Jean Macgregor glanced up at him with a mischievous smile.

“Oh, well, if you don’t know, I mustn’t tell tales out of school.”

“There’s a young man named Simon Lambert,” said Compton.

Jean Macgregor looked amused.

“There certainly is!” she said, with hearty agreement.

“And young Feldmann,” said Compton.

“Exactly! Edward P. Feldmann, Junior. Rolling in dollars and devoted to Madge.”

“Any others?” asked Compton quietly, and without undue curiosity.

“As thick as leaves in Vallambrosa,” said Jean, eyeing her drawing with apparent disapproval. “The streets of London are crowded with ’em. Unfortunately most of them haven’t a bean. There’s an artist in Flood Street who lives on sardines, when he can afford them. And there’s a young man who works in a garage at Putney. And there’s a legal laddy in the Temple who comes pretty often, hoping for a kind word. Many others crowd these rooms when I want to get on with my job. I expect you’ll meet them before long.”

Commander Compton laughed good-naturedly, although he felt a little uneasy at this revelation of his daughter’s popularity.

“I was hoping to keep Madge to myself for a while,” he said, “but I seem to have many rivals for her affection.”

Jean Macgregor looked at her drawing again and made a face at it before putting it on one side and reaching for a cigarette.

“No need to worry,” she assured him. “Madge receives their homage with perfect self-possession and complete indifference. It seems so natural to her. And it’s Simon she really likes, though she doesn’t know it.”

Commander Compton was being put wise to his daughter’s private life. This red-headed girl was perhaps telling him things which she thought he ought to know. He was rather grateful to her.

“Is Simon all right?” he asked.

Jean Macgregor laughed as though the question amused her a good deal.

“Simon is up against life, poor lad. He thinks it ought to be an intelligent adventure, leading to a realization of truth and beauty. He finds it unintelligent, vulgar, stupid and cruel. So he sulks about it. But he’s quite a nice child, if you make allowance for temperament.... I fancy I hear Madge rattling the letter-box. She does that when she forgets to take her key, and wakes me out of my beauty sleep in the wee sma’ hours with callous cruelty, curse her!”

Jean Macgregor went out into the small hall and unfastened the door. Commander Compton heard his daughter’s voice.

“So sorry! Is Father here? What a smell of sausages!”

“None for you, my beauty!” said Jean. “And there’s a father waiting for his long lost che-ild!”

Madge came in with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks, looking as though she had run all the way upstairs.

“Sorry, Father! Mr. Keening took the second act all over again. One of the girls had a nervous breakdown, or I shouldn’t have been here now. Has Jean been good to you?”

She slipped out of her fur coat and flung her hat on the sofa, after presenting her cheek to her father.

“You must be tired, my dear,” said Compton anxiously. “How hard those ruffians work you!”

She didn’t look tired. She assured him that she had had a most amusing time. But she confessed that she had an aching void.

“Jean darling, what about a bit of toasted cheese and a pot of tea—a large pot of tea?”

Jean professed to regard the proposal as an outrage, and made a speech on the subject with sham indignation.

“Oh yes, I expected that! Just because you think you’re beautiful, you imagine that I’m going to wait on you hand and foot! I know you lovely ladies. You’re utterly selfish. You use your goo-goo eyes to enslave your friends and get everything for nothing. Disgusting, I call it.... Did you say toasted cheese?”

“Anything to fill a gap,” said Madge. “What have you been doing with yourself, Father?”

“Precious little,” said Commander Compton. “Killing time—not too successfully—until I could get a word with you.”

He was able to get a number of words with her. She sat on a low stool close to him, with her head against his knees, until Jean had made the toasted cheese, and she talked vivaciously of the rehearsals. Mr. Keening was a good producer, but apt to lose his temper. There had been a battle royal with a man, Richard Jervis, who took one of the leading parts. Beatrice Aylmer had had a touch of hysteria because Mr. Keening asked her if she had ever learnt how to think. It was all very amusing and exciting.

Commander Compton listened to all this with a smile and occasional laughter. Madge made the scene alive by her mimicry. After his disappointing day it was delightful to sit here in his daughter’s rooms. It was the comradeship for which he had been waiting. And it was nice to see Jean Macgregor’s devotion to Madge. In spite of all her mockery, it was evident that she worshipped Madge for her beauty and gaiety.

But it was a pity that when ten o’clock came, according to a small clock on the mantelpiece, Madge suddenly jumped up and became restless.

“I was almost forgetting!” she exclaimed. “I promised to go round to Jenifer’s house-warming party in Tite Street. It’s going to be rather fun. Edward Feldmann, Junior, is coming up for me at a quarter past. I shall have to slip into another frock, Father. Do you mind?”

He minded exceedingly, not so much for his own sake, though certainly for his own sake, but also for hers.

“My dear child! After your hard day’s work? Surely you ought to go to bed soon. Can’t you give that party a miss?”

She couldn’t give it a miss. She had promised Jenifer most faithfully. And Edward was taking her, and would be very peeved if she betrayed him. She wasn’t a bit tired really. She was never tired.

Edward Feldmann came up punctually at a quarter past ten, looking very fresh and elegant in evening clothes, with a gardenia in his buttonhole. He was very glad, he said, to see Commander Compton again. He smoked a cigarette until Madge emerged from an inner room in a blue frock which slipped away from her bare arms and shoulders.

“Blindingly beautiful!” said young Feldmann, pretending to stagger back at this vision of loveliness.

Compton thanked the red-headed girl for her patience with him, and descended the stairs with his daughter and the American boy. There was a big car outside, waiting to convey Madge to the party, and, before getting into it, she turned to kiss him.

“Sorry I’ve got to go, Father. Won’t you come too? Jenifer would love to see you.”

“I’m not wearing a wedding garment,” he answered. “And you young people don’t want an elderly man with one arm to spoil the picture.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense! Do come, Father.”

“Yes, fine idea!” said young Feldmann, with a very good imitation of enthusiasm.

Compton hesitated, greatly tempted. But he resisted the temptation. They were only being kind to him. He would be out of place in a party of young people, none of whom he would know, and all of whom would feel constrained by his presence.

“Send Madge back in time for a little sleep,” he told young Feldmann.

He watched the car glide away. It was lit inside, and he saw Madge using a powder-puff. She waved her hand—and the powder-puff—as the car swung round towards the Embankment. He felt very elderly for a moment or two. Madge had made her own life ... without him.