Twopence Coloured (7 page)

And the remainder of the play was merely an endorsement of this cardinal point. There were no more emotional heights to be scaled. Indeed, by the time the play was over, and she came out into the air, she had quite cooled down.

It was with a curious blending of pride and trepidation that Jackie went round to the Stage Door afterwards, and asked of its guardian for Mr. Gissing. Her inquiry was handled with deferential suspicion, and in the few silent moments that she was kept waiting she was granted her first authentic impression of Stage Doors and the stone and brick passages leading therefrom — which was an impression of something distantly underhand, of business being transacted in a quiet and slightly furtive way, as from a distant
consciousness
of sin — which furtiveness was tempered by a certain humming jollity and ebullience whenever a human being passed across its background…. But this was but a fleeting and transitory impression, washed away in a variety of other more emphatic ones, by the time she had been
transported
to the door of Mr. Gissing’s dressing-room, and her conductor was knocking upon it.

“Hullo!” Mr. Gissing was heard shouting, and the door was opened by Mr. Gissing’s slightly hostile dresser, through the defensive arms of whom Jackie peered through at Mr. Gissing, and Mr. Gissing peered through at Jackie.

“Come in, come in, come in!” cried Mr. Gissing, three times exactly, as dressing actors have done since the first dressing actor. “I shan’t be long now.”

Jackie entered smilingly, and the dresser went out,
apparently
in a temper.

Mr. Gissing’s face was glistening with grease; Mr. Gissing was without coat and waistcoat, and wore no collar, and he was rubbing maliciously away at his face with a towel. You could have imagined that the labours of the evening had only
just begun, to watch him rubbing. He rubbingly offered her a chair, and continued to rub, looking all the time into the mirror, as though in a wild endeavour to emulate the insane frictional antics of the individual therein reflected. His dressing-table, which was a long wooden shelf, was covered with a towel, which was stained luxuriously with carmine (Marat’s bath-towel might have looked rather like this one) and spread with stumps and assortments of grease-paints number five and nine, and blue pencil. An inconceivably vast powder-puff lay to one side, together with a pot of cream (which was the size of a gas reservoir), and Dick Dudgeon’s hair. In other parts of the blinding little room lay Dick
Dudgeon’s
overcoat, Dick Dudgeon’s top-boots, Dick Dudgeon’s hat, and other Dick Dudgeon parts, all lying anywhere, rather as though Dick Dudgeon had been the victim of spontaneous combustion (after all his trials) — as indeed, in some sense, he had — no trace of his character remaining in his earthly medium, who was an actor rubbing away with a keen eye upon his supper.

“Enjoy yourself?” asked Mr. Gissing, peering keenly forward to simulate his model in the mirror, who was at that moment engaged in placing delicate slabs of grease along his eye-brows.

“Terribly,” said Jackie, and there was a silence of
contentment
.

“Saw
you
,”
said Mr. Gissing.

“Oh, did you? Can one see people from there, then?”

“Well. I knew where you were.”

Here’s fame, if you like, thought Jackie. Here am I, with Dick Dudgeon — the chosen one out of all those four hundred odd who are now going benightedly home — sitting behind the scenes in easy colloquy with the figure whom they
rapturously
applauded, and from whom the whole evening has emanated. Here’s fame, if only a vicarious fame, if you like, thought Jackie. Or at least this is what Jackie, who always liked to get the best out of every moment, tried to think. Actually, and for some obscure reason, it did n’t seem to work. She found herself obtaining little or no pleasure from the fact.

They talked for about five minutes, during which the dresser returned, and having silently collected all outstanding parts of Dick Dudgeon, with a view to his resurrection
tomorrow
night, quietly received his dismissal. And then there came a knock at the door.

The new-comer, whose knock was a formality, was a
gentleman
of about the same age as Mr. Gissing, and swiftly
identifiable
as the gentleman who had played the parson. He wore a thick overcoat which was loose about the collar and rather too large for him, and kid-gloves upon his hands, the left palm of which he punched methodically and genially with his right fist, on and off during the greater part of his discourse. He assumed a bantering tone from the commencement.

“Here he is, here he is, here he is!” he said. “The last as usual! The last as usual!” (Punch. Punch.)

“Ah, Mr. Grayson,” said Mr. Gissing. “This is Miss Mortimer. Miss Mortimer, this is Mr. Grayson.”

“How d’ you do,” said Jackie, smiling from her chair, and “Good evening, Miss Mortimer,” said Mr. Grayson, bowing mockingly, as much as to imply that you could n’t fool him that she was the genuine Miss Mortimer. A rather rude man, Jackie thought.

There followed a slightly difficult silence, relieved in no manner by the dull smack of Mr. Grayson’s gloves.

“Well, and how are we to-night, Mr. Gissing?”

“I’m very well, thank you,” said Mr. Gissing, fixing his tie.

Punch…. Punch.

“The Great British Public in a curious mood this evening, I think?” hazarded Mr. Grayson.

“Really?”

“Or do I malign the Great British Public?”

“I thought they were rather sweet.”

“Yes.
You
would. Poor old Dobell, though. He nearly passed out about his round. It’s the first time the dear old thing’s missed it since we opened.”

This was evidently a round of applause, thought Jackie.

“I got mine all right,” said Mr. Gissing.

“Oh yes,
you
would,” said Mr. Grayson, with great
mean
ing
, and there was a silence in which Mr. Grayson, punching mildly, watched Mr. Gissing buttoning his waistcoat.

“Of course, how they
get
the jobs I don’t know,” said Mr. Grayson, manifestly poking fun at Mr. Gissing for Jackie’s benefit. “It’s beyond me. I mean to say, look at the fellow. Look at him. I ask you.”

Here some voice softly whispered into Jackie’s ear, “Actor’s Jokes,” and she answered that prompting with a genial smile until such time as the pleasantry might exhaust itself. If Jackie had known how many weary times, in the career ahead of her, she would be called upon to assume that dread, fixed, receptive smile for like occasions, it is possible that she would have had more difficulty in responding now.

“I mean,
look
at him, I mean,” said Mr. Grayson. “I ask you, I mean. I mean —
look!

“I mean, have you
ever?
Did
you ever?

“I mean, I could understand it if there was any
talent
….

“Or any looks even,” said Mr. Grayson. “It must be
influence
, that’s all. What do you think, Miss Mortimer?”

“Yes. I expect it’s influence,” said Jackie, and laughed.

There was another awkward, if bland, silence, the
conclusion
that it was Influence seeming to have brought us to
something
of a
cul-de-sac
conversationally, and the jesters having nothing to do but gaze at the silent object of their attack with a kind of paternal mockery. Happily there came a knock at the door. “Can I come in?” came a man’s voice.

“Don’t ask
me.
Don’t ask
me.
” Mr. Grayson would take no responsibility, as a head was put round the door. “I should n’t
think
you could. Star’s dressing-room, you know.”

There entered a very tall gentleman with a long nose and a diffident air, who was readily recognizable as the gentleman who had impersonated General Burgoyne. His hair was
greying
and thin, his face nervous and emaciated, and his voice supercilious but submissive. He had the appearance of a legal adviser in a dread of getting flustered, and looked, in general, as though he should have had his cup of cocoa and been under the sheets two hours ago at least. This was Mr. Dobell, and Jackie took to him at once.

“I came to ask if it’s true there’s a Call, to-morrow,” he said.

“
Call!
” ejaculated both Mr. Grayson and Mr. Gissing.

“Well, our A.S.M. was saying something about it.”

“Well, we’ve been told nothing,” said Mr. Gissing. “This is Miss Mortimer, Dobell — Miss Mortimer, Mr. Dobell.”

“Good evening,” said Mr. Dobell, and Jackie all at once found herself being saluted with a long thin hand, reinforced by a long thin smile, both of which vanished as suddenly as they had come.

“Well, then, it’s a false alarm, I expect,” said Mr. Dobell. “But he certainly said something as I was coming off.”

“Oh, that boy’ll come to a bad end,” said Mr. Grayson. “By the way, did you know Ernest was in front to-night?”

“
Was
he!…” About three minutes’ conversation now ensued on the topic of Ernest, during which another
gentleman
, apparently the Stage Manager, entered brightly with, “Well, well, well — what are we all up to? … Call? No. No call…. Only understudies” — and during which, in the general hubbub, Jackie found herself cornered by Mr. Dobell.

“Are you in this business, Miss Mortimer?” asked Mr. Dobell.

“No, I’m not, really,” said Jackie.

“Dreadful business,” said Mr. Dobell, ruminating, but he did not tell her why.

“Yes,” said Jackie, with the same vagueness. “I suppose it is.”

“Were you in front to-night?”

“Yes. It was fearfully good, was n’t it?”

“Yes. It plays very well, does n’t it?”

“Yes. I thought
you
were wonderful,” said Jackie.

“Well, it’s a wonderful
Part
,
isn’t it?” said a fair-minded Mr. Dobell, but he was a little breathless and flushed over the compliment for all that. “You can’t go wrong. It plays itself.”

“Oh, I don’t know….”

“Gissing’s immense, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is wonderful, isn’t he?”

By this time Mr. Gissing was ready, and a move was being made for the door. Mr. Gissing smiled upon Jackie and went ahead with Mr. Grayson, and Mr. Dobell and Jackie brought up the rear, meekly discussing the weather. On emerging into the fresh air, Mr. Grayson immediately began hissing through his teeth and punching with violent regularity, as though he had been wound up afresh: a stoutish woman had
materialized
, evidently the puncher’s choice in life, to whom Jackie was not introduced, and who was apparently oblivious, through usage, to the padded warfare eternally raging in the person of her domestic idol: they all stood there, swaying slightly in the wind, and valedictorily conversational, until such time as some intrepid spirit might say “Well,” and let them go home; which pioneer work Mr. Gissing undertook (Mr. Grayson supporting him with an even more resounding smack than usual): and then they dispersed. Mr. Dobell raised his hat and smiled very particularly at Jackie, and the next moment she was walking home under the twinkling stars at the usual rapid pace tacitly exacted by her deliverer.

They were passing St. Paul’s School, and she began it with “Oh, by the way,” as people do when broaching subjects upon which their lives hang by threads. And from the first moment he threw up a stolid fort of resistance. But that she did not mind, so long as it was acknowledged that she might storm it, so long as the argument was in the open and they might contradict each other flat without incivility.

“I won’t,” said Mr. Gissing, looking down at her. “Honestly.”

“Perhaps,” said Jackie, “you don’t think I could Act?”

“That’s irrelevant, anyway,” said Mr. Gissing.

“But
do
you think I could?” asked Jackie.

“How on earth should I know? I should n’t think so.”

“You
would
n’t?
” said Jackie, with a rather mixed air of detachment.

“No.”

“Perhaps you think I’m not decent-looking enough?”

“On the contrary, I think you’re extremely pretty.”

“You
do?
”
said Jackie, also with a very insecure
detachment
.

“At times overbearingly so,” added Mr. Gissing.

“Well, then …” said Jackie, but he remained silent. She herself wanted this silence, to think about “overbearingly so”, but she brought herself back to business.

“I say,” said Jackie. “Won’t you?”

“What do you want me to do, anyway?”

“To introduce me to some one, or give me some
advice
.”

“All right. I Advise you to go to an agent.”

“Yes, but won’t you help me?”

“No, I won’t. If there was the slightest possibility of ever forgiving myself if I did — I might…. Anyway, the best I could do would be to get you some rotten understudy on tour.”

“Well, that’d be something. But I want, really, to start at the beginning, and learn, and get Experience, and all that. I really am serious, I mean. I’m not one of those who think they can jump into it.”

“Oh, I see. You’re one of the I-started-at-the-
bottom-Sound
-Training-on-the-Road-Nothing-like-it-old-boy school? Then you should start with a fit-up.”

“What’s a fit-up?”

“A Fit,” said Mr. Gissing, after a pause. “Up.”

There was another pause.

“But you must
have
Experience, must n’t you?”

“Why?”

“Oh — don’t be silly.”

“I wouldn’t start on Experience. If you go on with this, you’ll have enough Experience rammed down your throat without going out to seek it.”

“Yes — but you must
have
Experience. I bet you’ve had lots of it, anyway.”

“Oh,
I
have, yes. That’s why I’m so full of mannerisms. I was a much better actor ten years ago.”

“Besides, I’ve got to earn my living…. And by the way, if it’s such a rotten profession, why are you in it?”

Mr. Gissing paused before replying to this.