Twopence Coloured (21 page)

O
N Wednesday morning belated rehearsals were begun for “For God, King, and Country,” and work (as it was called) commenced in earnest. They were now, for five weeks, a stock company at the King's, putting on a new show every week, rehearsing every morning, and playing twice nightly with one Thursday matinée. Jackie was unable to flatter the act of moonily lolling about on a half-lit stage from ten to two every morning with the name of work. It was, rather, a kind of deliberate and intensified form of
idleness
…. But, taken in conjunction with the nightly
performances
, it was the most laborious undertaking she was ever to experience in her career, and during the day she was only out of the theatre for four hours in the afternoon. These she spent in Brighton, either at the pictures, or with Charles, who came over expressly to entertain her. Richard was far too busy.

For he, at the request of Mr. Carters (who was constantly absent), was undertaking the production of “For God, King, and Country,” and he was down on the stage or up in the office the entire day. He was also partially stage-managing, in conjunction with the hook-nosed young man, and filling the General's uniform in the drama. He was, as far as Jackie could see, enjoying himself immensely, and having acquired the habit of ordering and talking, never left off talking, and at midnight supper at Knottley Lodge gobbled his food at a hideous rate.

Jackie had the juvenile lead. She played it neither well nor ill (it being quite impossible to do either) and she gave satisfaction. Large posters in the slummier parts of the town depicted Jackie, in a dress belonging to nineteen-hundred
and the arms of an officer (Mr. Grover) whose uniform was of the same period. Her first taste of fame. If she had only been playing at the Royal, she would have looked up the Langhams.

There was no dress-rehearsal for “For God, King, and Country”: nor was there any seriousness or alarm on the first night. There never was, in Mr. Carters' companies. Each actor was left pretty well to shift for himself, and, buoyed up with the pervading spirit of religion and
patriotism
, the thing was easy. Religious patriotism, and the swagger thereof, atoned for lines, which were very poor. Richard's slogan during production was apt. “When in doubt, say ‘Never!' and wait to be prompted.” This was quite safe, the entire play consisting of people swearing they would Never, under any circumstances, or the acutest torture, and taking an enormous bloated pride in the grandiose refusal.

The cast of “For God, King, and Country” was not the same as that of the Western play preceding it, though many, like Jackie, stayed on. The cowboy supers were dismissed back to Jones' corner and the under-agent-world, where some of them got crowd-work on the films, some of them starved, some of them took to window-cleaning or bar-tending, and others lived by running away from their rooms. These were replaced by a quantity of young fishermen in the Brighton sea, who worked for ninepence a performance, whose naïveté was refreshing, and who, with the historic impressionability of toilers on the deep, took the most pious interest in their parts, which were military and constabulary. These, in
conjunction
with a military band from Lewes, made up the number of forty, and formed one of the most impressive scenes of the play. This took place in Whitehall, the curtain rising upon two mounted guardsmen in their glorious red array. Which received, for reasons obscure to the mind, storm after storm of applause. Whether it was Whitehall which had made the hit, or whether it was the two men, it was quite impossible to say. Neither gave the secret away. Whitehall wabbled flimsily in the draught: the two men remained as stiff as stone, and it was clear that the country
was saved. When this was over the comedian arrived with his wife, who made a great fuss of him in his new uniform, and beat the villain, who came on coarsely to disparage the celebrations, with her umbrella, Without, however, creating a scene in this ministerial thoroughfare, for no one else arrived until the arrival of the band, which marched on to the tune of “Colonel Bogey,” lined up on the pavement, filled the theatre with its scarlet noises, and received rather more applause than Whitehall. There was then a great stir, and the General appeared in a plumed hat, saluting vigorously. A curious crowd might now have been expected to have assembled for this portentous not to say national spectacle, but this was manifestly not the case. Firstly because the comedian was making rude faces and derisive gestures behind the General's back (which the populace could barely have
tolerated
in so solemn a scene), and secondly because there was no sign of a crowd. The only solution was that some surging mass, out of the picture, was somewhere being held back by a cordon of police. This would also account for the absence of traffic, which would have otherwise cramped a General's style when pacing into the middle of the road to make his speech. His speech was addressed to the buildings opposite (the windows of which were doubtless thronged), and was a pleasant blending of private and public sentiment.

“Ah — could I have been wrong,” he began, “in thus letting my son leave for the front — without a word —
without
letting him know that he is already forgiven in my heart? Could I have been wrong?” He evidently rather thought he had. He paced up and down, and clasped his hands behind his back, as one who says “Tut-tut.” The army, however, in the meanwhile, had an air of being kept waiting, and so he became more general. All differences, he said, were now sunk in common cause against the enemy. Every gallant lad had answered the trumpet-call of Duty, and filed up in his
country's
ranks. The General was proud — yes, proud — of them all. He was proud — proud — proud…. He was prouder than he would have been if he had not forgotten his lines at this point (which he invariably did), but he was proud in
any case. He expanded on the subject at great length, clearly carried away by these thoughts, which did not seem to have occurred to him before. He continued for some four minutes — every now and then, with a sweep of his arm, including the army, which possibly thought all this was very much to the point but which was looking stiffly ahead and slyly licking its lips in preparation for the brassy tune it would march off to. This, on the cue “God, King and COUNTRY!” it did; and the scene would have ended significantly did not the audience at this juncture imperiously demand an encore. This it marched back to give, with the enforced approval of the General, who put the soldier away and revealed the
connoisseur
, joining his hands behind his back and lifting his head in benign appraisement, as much as to say, “We‘re a musical country, and should have more of this kind of thing.” It was, however, a difficult moment for him. It was clear that his authority, though not yet defied, was being ignored.
Furthermore
, the War had developed into a concert, which it should not have done. The others on the stage — the comedian, his wife, the villain, and various subsidiary ladies — having no claim to authority were not in the same difficulty. They could simply look on with the rather proud pleasure of those having wangled a pass through the cordon. An astonishing spectacle altogether, only to be equalled by the spectacle which followed three scenes later. This was of a more gruesome nature, being enacted at the Front. Where this Front was it was not easy to discern (the precise War itself not being specified); but it was in a red twilight, and the villain was present, pretending like anything to be a Correspondent, but actually being a Spy (and behaving like one), and the
comedian
was there, and so was the General (necessarily), and the question immediately harassing the General was, Could our Lads Get Through? It was doubtful. A battle decided this. This took place on the stage, commencing with a
succession
of violent bangs, and a sudden glorious inrush (R.) of the army, which, flinging itself upon its belly, or taking up statuesque positions on one knee, proceeded to defend itself (prior to Getting Through) from a hypothetical enemy of
obscure nationality but great redoubtability L. This army was composed of fifteen Boys, four of whom were supplied with blank cartridges, which made a great deal of noise and pink fire, and carried off the scene. The rest were forced to content themselves with dummy rifles and inspired military gestures — such as taking off one's cap and cheering, pointing madly ahead as much as to say “Look at that one. Watch me get him!” shouting “Bang!” pretending to be wounded, or, in privileged cases, dying. Dying, indeed, was obviously the particular treat; and the Boys were difficult to control in this matter. “We can't
all
die, you know,” Richard had weakly pleaded, during the short rehearsal given the Boys on Monday afternoon. But he was overruled by the incontrollable
sentiment
of his performers. Some, indeed, he expressly forbade to die, but all those escaping this stricture succeeded, when the heated moment came, not only in dying, but in dying several times a minute — having a miraculous faculty for abruptly surviving purely in order to experience once more the luxuries of heroic extinction. The fact that in these brief moments of renewed existence they invariably allowed
themselves
another shot or two must have been as discouraging to the enemy as it was outrageous to a sense of fair play. There were, however, at least thirty fatalities among fifteen men in the four minutes allotted to this battle. To supplement the din supplied by the blank cartridges, the hook-nosed
stage-manager
dropped an enormous quantity of scenery weights and braces time and again on to the wooden floor behind; and overlooking the battle, in a tactical and Ney-like position on a mound, stood the General (who was Richard Gissing) gazing steadily and at length through a handsome pair of opera glasses at Jackie Mortimer, who was dressed in Red Cross costume for the next scene, and who never failed to come round into the wings at this time to undergo this remarkable scrutiny. At the end of the four minutes there was a sudden cheer from the ranks at the arrival of a gun on wheels. Which gun was rushed on at a victorious pace, and was useful less as a weapon of destruction (being composed entirely of wood) than as some curb upon the popularity of dying — inasmuch
as both the quick and the dead instantly arose and fought for places in wheeling it, with exulting cries, off Left — which was much more natural behaviour. The scene was now at an end. The Boys returned, cheering with their caps upon their bayonets: the hook-nosed young man indulged in a final orgy of dropping behind: and the General, deserting his mound, paced down-stage to encounter another General, whose congratulatory hand he warmly shook. The Boys, without moving an inch, had Got Through, and this was a manifestly historic reunion between two Generals. They held it, and the curtain fell.

Of such stuff was “For God, King, and Country.” There being no seats in the house above two shillings, a rough-
and-ready
money's worth was being given, and there was no possibility of complaint. The whole was, moreover, to those who had the wit to see it and make it so, as subtle and
exquisite
a piece of fooling as the theatre might provide. But even apart from this point of view, and taking into account the pious gravity with which it was for the most part received, Jackie never had again, in the course of her career, the same assured sense of fulfilling an honest demand. She could look back upon this period with affection.

In the next three productions Richard had no hand. They lost a great deal in spirit and abandon, but he was in each case given the leading part, which he played with a breadth exactly calculated to fit his audience. On Saturday nights he gave a West End performance, and evaded derision, and on Thursday night (the early-closing and most
impressionable
of nights) he expanded into the Surrey side and carried all before him. Mr. Carters was conscious of having found a jewel, and came forward with startling contracts, which were refused. It was a lesson, to Mr. Carters, against the
employment
of cheap labour — a lesson, after years of conservatism, impossible to be learnt.

The juvenile parts were thrown to Jackie, who acquitted herself well. With her accustomed quickness and gravity she learnt enough shallow tricks of voice and gesture (there were only about a score) to carry herself through without
disgrace. On this substratum of elementary technique she hoped, when the time came, to build a performance.

*

And so the time fled by until the last week. It had long been decided that she would not be able to remain at
Southshore
for the last week, for Charles would then be absent on his cricket. There was talk of her staying on alone with Richard, but it came to nothing. Richard was plainly against it.

Thus it was that one Friday evening, at five o'clock (and without one word said to each other about themselves), she found herself looking out at the sea from the window of a pleasant room in Kemp Town. Richard had found this for her, and had just delivered her. She had one week more down here, and then London awaited her. Her suitcases were on the bed, and she was back again with her rooms and her tragedies…. She could hardly believe she had to face them again.

And then, on Wednesday, which they spent in the country, the thing happened.

T
HEY were to spend the day on the Downs, and he called for her at her rooms, and they caught a bus at Castle Square for Patcham.

It was Thursday. She had not yet lost the sense of release in having her mornings free from rehearsals, and she was bright in the sunshine of the Square, and talkative on the jolting bus.

The conductor’s bell pinged away, with automatic and unquestioning merriness: she clasped her sandwiches, and looked at the sky (which was doubtful), and smelt the cold air, and let her spirit slide upon a thin layer of content.

They reached Patcham at eleven o’ clock. Here the sky was already grey, and the bus, ranting through the chill, still little village, pulled up amongst the trees, and was quiet.

If it had not ranted so, previously, its sudden quiet would not have been so breathless a quiet, nor would the stamping leisured exodus of the few wayfarers from the top of the bus, and their immediate vague disappearance to dreamy destinations, have struck the heart with something akin to dread. But this is what it did to Jackie. The thin layer of content was sensibly breaking up.

He helped her on with her mackintosh, and she helped him on with his, and speaking of the weather, which was obviously going to be very bad, they took the road that led to the Downs.

“Would you like to go back?” he said.

“No. Rather not,” said Jackie. “I expect it’ll pass.” And then, because she had a sudden ill thought of next week and London, she found herself almost trembling, and she knew that the layer had collapsed.

It was a nightmare — a rain-grey nightmare on a white
dusty road. The idea of going back to Brighton was
horrifying
. The whole idea of existence was horrifying — greyly, coldly desolate. She could just keep in touch with it, just survive, so long as she walked with him along this road. She could never do anything else…. This must be infinitely prolonged.

They walked on, in a seldom broken silence, for about ten minutes, and then he said they might as well put their sandwiches in his pocket: he thought there was room. She gave him the package, and he commenced to try to do so….

“I’ll do it,” she said, and he succumbed without a word. The moment of contact was dreadful. He lifted his hand weakly as she stuffed them in. He was a weak, trembling, inefficient, inadequate thing, like herself….

They walked on again. The rain still held off, and they came to Clayton Hill. The road lay between two steep embankments. Here he said that he thought he saw some blackberries, up above, and she looked upwards languidly with him. And then left him, and climbed up to get some, with a kind of numbed despair, and found a great deal. “There are lots up here,” she cried, and “Are there?” he said, but would not climb up to join her. She picked a
handful
. He watched her from below…. A car rushed by‚ and he said nothing, and looked at her…. Then she climbed down, warily, and with the awkward grace of her youth. But could not manage the last part, unless she risked a jump, and smiled weakly at her predicament, and took his hand, and managed it. But the blackberries were all crushed in her hand. She showed them to him in her messy fingers, and they stood close together, and he selected the best one for himself. He ate this, and she consumed the rest — one after another — her childish greed for sweet things rising momentarily above her sombre mood — blending strangely in with her disconsolate condition…. They walked on in a dream.

*

In a dream. At the top of the hill they side-tracked to the right along a rutted clayey road that led to the two
windmills of Clayton Hill. The sky grew darker every moment, but still it did not rain. There was a wind up here, though. Far in the distance, and over infinite grey undulations, lay the lead-grey sea. One of the two mills was in motion — steadily creaking in the wind. Creaking above the county, which sang in the gusts beneath. An
unearthly
sound, heard alone by them. And miles below they discerned a doll-like train, gushing madly ahead to London, like a messenger with vindictive tidings. They could not hear any noise, though they thought they caught a long-drawn whistle…. That silent, gushing train was most
dreamlike
of all.

And then it began to rain.

Hesitantly at first, with sudden dashes of spleen. They put their collars up, and he took her arm, and they made for a tall-treed little wood in a valley to their right. The spleen increased, and all at once it was no longer spleen, but the steady deliberate abuse of intentional downpour…. They cried to each other and commenced to run…. They were racing each other. She half fell once, and he looked back, but she recovered and followed…. They arrived together, hand in hand: and they looked each other gravely in the eyes, and found themselves in each other’s arms, and paused, and kissed each other.

It was the rain’s doing. It patted down on the roof of leaves, and stormed slantingly in the open. It was ruthlessly responsible.

The rush of noise was amazing. They were the most quiet of all things on the Downs. After a while she left his face, and put her head on his shoulder.

*

Then she was lying back, speechless, on the wet turf, and he was leaning over her. And “Oh, Jackie dear — dear!” he was saying. And she was taking his head in her hands and kissing it — shamelessly, deliberately, and with
profound
proficiency. She had never done such a thing in her lite before, but she was, from some mysterious and beautiful source, an adept. Each contact of her lips was the
deliberate
signing and sealing of her surrender. She was his for ever, and that was the end of the matter. Then she put him away from her, and they sat up, and began to talk.

*

The rain still held. Sometimes Jackie left their retreat, and went out to blink at the sky, and hold out her hand, and make unfavourable reports. Sometimes he joined her, and held her hand, while they blinked together. They smiled and laughed continually, and he seldom let go of her hand. At half-past twelve they had their sandwiches. They sat up, munching with smiling stuffed mouths at each other, infinitely charmed by this droll and irrelevant replenishment of their baser selves. But then they were infinitely amused and charmed by everything. And they called each other “dear” and “darling.” Tremblingly, exultingly they did this, and giddy with their sudden right to these age-old utterances of cherishment — their sudden admittance into the ranks of lovers.

They saved a few sandwiches providently for Tea (as they called it), stowed them away in his pocket, and as it was now raining very feebly, went out, arm in arm, for a walk. They began to talk about the future after a time, but they soon decided that that might wait for to-morrow. After all, they had the rest of their lives for that, hadn’t they? They spoke little. There was nothing but the grey scudding sky, the roar of the wind, the soggy white track, and the rumble and exacting recurring creases of her mackintosh as her body swayed along…. “Thank God it rained,” she said.

They came into the main road at last, and encountered a poor wet cyclist, wheeling his machine up the hill, and a dismal labourer, who asked them the time. With infinite pains did they endeavour to give the true time to this labourer. In such a way only might they weakly compensate him for his unlovely and loveless condition. They desired to
compensate
the entire world.

They had a look at the Clayton church, and they had a look at some ducks in a pond near by, and were filled with pity and affection for their perky, splashed, rainbow-coloured,
benignant, waddling, silent affairs — an affection
communicated
to each other solely by the hand, for they had no words for such things. Then they said that they would go home for tea. But by home they meant their old retreat under the trees, and by tea they meant their sandwiches. They climbed the hill by another route. This climbing was marked by a charming event, for, going aside from the road, Richard discovered a nest. And in this nest was a thrush, resting upon its young. It appeared to take no notice of them, but looked ahead, in the quiet, dripping hedge, with shining eyes of angry patience. They were almost horrified by the intensity and stark singleness of purpose in nature. The poor bird, as Richard said, could n’t even read a book: its present object was to sit upon its young, and it had to wait, in utter resigned exclusion from all activity, until that object was fulfilled. Richard took this light-heartedly; but Jackie, as they passed on, was thoughtful and impressed. Under the influence of her love she was a different creature — queerly sensitive to new strange appeals….

They found their old place, and they sat down to have their tea. But the sandwiches were all crushed and damp in their greasy paper, and, on their being put down for a moment, two little ants were found running all over them in criss-cross directions. And a beetle was near by‚ with an air of having had an evil black bite or two; and they were rather put off. But they did not want their tea, really: they only wanted to sit up, warm and close to each other, and watch the rain, which was now pouring down with all its old liberality, and coming in two fascinating different rains — one slantwise and heavy — the other perpendicular and fine — a clever, enchanted pattern.

And sitting and watching this rain on the humid ground, and with Jackie’s little wrist-watch ticking away the last hour they had, and with Jackie’s grubby, moist little hand in his, and with Jackie’s face and mouth, all stained with blackberries, and in a great mess, lain against his own, they spent the last glowing hour of their day.

And all at once it seemed to Jackie that until this moment
she had not understood this thing at all. She felt something stealing in upon her — something which made her cold and frightened, and yet infinitely consoled…. She remembered that thrush, in all its little fortitude and helplessness and loneliness, and she was suddenly aware of communing with something beyond herself, above herself — of being an ally, even, in some magnificent and pitiless purpose beyond her.

All things conspired to this conclusion — the whole thick, intense, labouring life of the drenched grey summer about her — the lush grotesquerie of it all — birds, trees, ants, spiders, beetles, flies, nettles, weeds — the flora and fauna of a rain-soaked universe, working out their own strange, vivid destinies. She was filled with the uncanniness and stupendous wickedness of nature in this half-light. And yet because she was here with him, because her whole life was now fulfilled by him, she was part of that wickedness, and exulted in that participation. She was in the grasp of nature — and nature, with all its merciless cruelty, was a merciless bestower as well — a bestower for its own ends, and she had been singled out for its loveliest and most terrible of gifts.

And if nature was cruel, thought Jackie, then she, Jackie, also was cruel. And from her eyes glowed all the mysteries of all the cruelties since the world’s beginning.

*

His arms were still about her, and she could not move. She could never be parted from him, ever again. She was damp and afraid, but she was safe. So long as he held her, she was safe. It was not her own doing. The earth around her, with its gaunt burden of mist and rain, imprisoning them here, was answerable for it all.

All these thoughts flowed through her, and she wanted to express them to him. She wanted to tell him her revelation, her new, exultant understanding and wisdom. She wanted him to know that she, a poor thing in the rain, was the proudest and most momentous thing on earth; that she was no longer a girl — that he, mystically, had made her a woman. Yes, that was it; he had transformed her into a woman. She was a member of the race: she was uplifted: she was here
to further the divine and terrific intrigue of the weeping world around her. It had found her, and she had found herself.

And he had done this. He was her own. She looked up at her possession. He was quite a weak thing — a mere implement in the hands of her overflowing and irresistible emotion. And yet her whole soul surged out in a flood of gratitude to him, for having come and awakened her. She could never tell him. She began to cry.