Chapter XII

All the names which Stannard had given her were those of minor managers. It was late in the season and their companies would in all probability be made up and booked for the road. Still she went to them. There was a bare chance that one of them might have a vacancy. For two hours she hung about their offices waiting for an interview, only to waste her time in the end. "Full up" was the answer she got to each application. The last place she called at was situated in a block of buildings off Shaftesbury Avenue. As she left it a door facing her on the opposite side of the passage opened and a man in a frock coat and silk hat came out. He stopped short, looked her up and down and spoke.

"Excuse me, but are you out of an engagement?"

"Yes," she replied, a last glimmer of hope flickering within her, the silk hat suggesting something managerial.

The stranger's next words confirmed her in this idea.

"I believe you're the very person I've been looking for for a week. The question is, can you sing?"

"Yes."

"Then come in."

He threw the door open again and followed her in. The room contained two chairs, a desk, a small grand piano, one or two playbills on the walls and several diagrams of the larynx, looking not unlike a map of the tube railways.

"This is my practise room and therefore bare," he explained. "It's bad to sing in a room blocked up with furniture. Breaks up the voice, you know. By the way, my name's Norburton--Gerald Norburton. You may have heard of it," he added modestly.

Alexandra had heard of it. The name was that of a singer of some repute.

"Oh, then, you're not an agent," she said, a little disappointed.

"Lord, no." The idea seemed to amuse him. "Fact of the matter is this: my friend, Maurice Haines, wrote to me the other day--here's his letter--asking me to find him a likely girl for a sketch he has booked at the Palace. He'd engaged some one, but she's just gone in for appendicitis. Funny thing, appendicitis. Has it ever occurred to you--" The blank look in Alexandra's face constrained him to keep to business. "So he appeals to me, thinking that as a singer I might know some one likely. But I didn't--not until I saw you. If you can sing it's a sure thing." He read from the letter he had been searching for.

"'She must be tall and dark and a lady. Youth essential. Of course she must have a well-trained voice, but previous experience doesn't matter. I'll look in next week, and if you know a girl who will do, for heaven's sake have her round. The sketch is booked for the next six months, first here and then in the leading provincial towns. I'll pay ten pounds a week for the right woman.'

"What do you think of that?"

"It seems to me it depends on my voice," said Alexandra.

"That's it. Do you mind singing me something? Here's a pile of songs. Pick out one you know."

She found a song. Norburton played the accompaniment. She had an idea she was singing well and hoped he would think so. When she finished, she had the impression that he was not satisfied.

"I'm afraid you're disappointed," she said, with foreboding.

"No, not exactly. You've a nice voice. You want to know how to pitch it better. As it is it won't carry. I believe I could teach you in five days, before Haines comes round."

"I couldn't expect you to do that."

"But I _do_ teach," he laughed. "Do you doubt my capability? I assure you that besides being a public singer I get three guineas for every half-hour lesson I give."

"What I meant was," said Alexandra, "that I couldn't expect you to coach me for nothing, and I couldn't pay enough to make it worth your while."

He appeared to think.

"I want to do my best for Haines," he said. "Look here. I'll give you five lessons--one every day for ten minutes--and you can pay me what you can afford, five shillings a lesson, say."

She colored. "That's charity."

"No. I really want to help Haines."

Now Alexandra had little more than five shillings in her purse. The next quarterly payment of her annuity would not be due for a fortnight. In the meantime all she possessed was some old jewelry that had belonged to her mother. There was the money Maggy had left behind her, but she was not going to touch that.

"I should like you to teach me. It's very good of you," she said. "Would you take this instead of money? It's worth a little more than five five-shilling lessons." She tendered him a ring with a single pearl in an antique setting. A pawnbroker would have lent her five pounds on it. She was anxious that he should take the ring. It would make her feel less under an obligation to him.

Apparently he appreciated her feelings.

"That's very pretty of you," he said. "It fits my little finger, too. Would you rather I took it?" There was a shade of reluctance in his voice.

"Much rather."

"Well, thank you very much. Now I must pull you through by a little teaching. Can you have your first lesson now? No time like the present, is there? Stand in the corner over there to the right. Now, sing 'ah' on middle C. Keep your tongue well down. Give it room--give it room! Swell it out! You'll do very well," he said, after ten minutes. "To-morrow, same time. I'll drop Haines a line. Don't thank me, please."

Another girl came in as Alexandra went out. She heard Norburton tell her she was early.

"Have you heard from Mr. ----" She thought the name mentioned was Haines, but argued she must have been mistaken. The girl was fair and short, not at all the type Norburton's friend wanted. Alexandra assumed she must be one of the singer's private pupils, and thought no more about her.

For the next four days she came for her lessons, and at the end of that time Norburton told her he was quite satisfied with the result.

"Haines will be here to-morrow at eleven," he told her. "Don't worry, you'll get the engagement."

All the same she did worry. She pinned her hopes on it. She had curtailed her food down to the irreductible minimum. Privation showed in her looks. She was not a big eater, but her physique demanded good and nourishing food, which now she never got. She wanted new shoes and gloves badly. These she could not manage to do without indefinitely. She began to lose confidence in herself in these days. She knew her appearance was noticeably shabby, and that she was getting the delicate look that employers dislike. One cannot say to the man from whom one is hoping for an engagement: "I'm pale, but I'll look better when I can afford to feed myself properly. My clothes are shabby, but they would be in rags if I hadn't looked after them as if they were priceless brocades. And I'm not poor and hungry and out of an engagement because I've no talent, but because I've certain principles that I've brought to the wrong place. Give me a chance and don't ask anything else of me."

At five minutes to eleven the next day she was in Shaftesbury Avenue. Outside Mr. Norburton's door some ten or twelve girls were waiting. They looked a mixed lot, all of them anxious, poor and shabby.

"He told me ten," said one of them, "and he's not here yet."

"I've been here since half-past nine," said another.

One bold spirit rapped sharply on the door.

As a result one next to it bearing a brass plate and a solicitor's name was opened and a man put his head out and angrily demanded:

"Who's making that row? If you're waiting to see the fellow who had that room, he's gone. Went away yesterday afternoon."

"Meaning Mr. Norburton?" asked one of the girls.

"I don't know what his name was. He's gone, anyhow. It's no good waiting about and making a noise."

He shut the door. The girls stared at one another blankly.

"I want to know the meaning of this," said one of them truculently. "P'raps the caretaker can tell us." She clattered down the stone stairs, and half a dozen of the others followed her.

A fair girl standing next to Alexandra spoke to her.

"Did you want to see Mr. Norburton too?"

"Yes, but I'm afraid I shan't." Alexandra felt faint.

"I don't think we shall either. It's my belief we've been done. Did he give you lessons?"

"Five."

"I had five, too," nodded the girl. "Two pounds I paid the blighter. He said I'd suit Mr. Haines a treat. Read me a letter saying he wanted a fair girl with a good figure and contralto voice-- What's that? It was a 'tall and dark' to you! My hat! What did _you_ pay?"

"I gave him a pearl ring."

"O-oh!" Her eyes went round. "I saw it on his finger. Then you were hard up?"

"I had the ring, but not the money to pay him."

"And I had the money. And I haven't got it now."

One of the girls who had gone to make enquiries below came up again.

"Thought I'd come and tell you," she panted. "It's true. He's gone, right enough. The piano was hired and it's been fetched away. He's done seventeen of us, the beast! His name isn't Norburton at all, but Easton or Weston, I forget which. If the real Mr. Norburton or Maurice Haines heard what he'd been up to they'd prosecute him. He's just been using their names to cod us. Oh, I'd like to--to--" The unspoken threat tailed off in a resigned sigh. "Well, there's a voice-trial at Daly's at 11.30. I'm off."

Alexandra did not move. She was dazed. The other girls melted away, all but one little creature in black who commenced to sob.

"Don't cry," said Alexandra, touched by her grief. "You must try and forget the disappointment."

The girl raised streaming eyes. She was very plain and wore her hair frizzed out all round her head. The fingers through which her tears had been trickling were red and work-worn.

"I paid him f-four pounds in gold," she wept. "And he s-said my voice was g-good enough to get me the engagement. And I've given notice at the place I'm at on the strength of it, and now I'll have to go back and ask to be kept on. Makes me ashamed of myself, it does, after what I said to the mistress about gettin' ten pounds a week on the stage. And now f-four pounds of good money gone!"

"Haven't you any left?"

"I've got eleven saved, but it would have been fifteen," sniffed the girl. She took it hardly that she had to pay so heavily for her experience.

"Well, then, cheer up," said Alexandra. "I haven't got fifteen shillings."

"Not in the world?"

"Not in the world."

"But you're a lady!"

"Am I?" asked poor Alexandra. Tears were not far from her own eyes now. The girl saw them, and the fount of her own dried up in her compassion for a disappointment that must be even greater than her own because of the actual need behind it. A lady, and with less than fifteen shillings in the world! Why, she had always been able to earn nearly ten shillings a week, without counting her board and keep. She had always been able to count on regular employment, plenty of food and a fairly comfortable bed; and until she had been dazzled by the magnificent prospect of ten pounds a week and still more by the idea of becoming a "star actress," she had been fairly contented with her life. She wished she had never seen that catch advertisement in the newspaper.

"I shouldn't think any more about the stage if I were you," advised Alexandra.

"I shan't," was the resolute answer. "It's no good, is it?"

"Not a bit of good."

The girl hesitated.

"Do you mind telling me," she said, "if it's very bad. The girls on it, I mean."

"It's difficult sometimes for them to be good," was Alexandra's qualified reply.

"That's pretty much what our milkman says. He had a wife he divorced that used to go on the stage once a year in pantomime."

Alexandra smiled wanly. She was getting accustomed to the democratic atmosphere of the stage, where social differences are inexistent. The dragging in of the milkman's wife was only a sharp-cut illustration of the lengths to which the leveling-down process could go. The life had robbed her of all surprise at the necessity of having to rub shoulders with ex-shopgirls and the like; but this was the first time she had found herself on terms of equality with a domestic servant.

"Dessay I'm well out of it," said the girl philosophically. "I hope you'll get on, miss."

As she passed Alexandra she stopped, making believe to pick up something that was not there.

"Oh, look what you've dropped!" she exclaimed, holding out two half-crowns.

Alexandra had come out that morning with only a few pence.

"It isn't mine," she disclaimed. "If you look in your purse you'll probably find it's your own money."

The girl made a pretense of doing so.

"No, that it isn't," she insisted. "It must be yours, right enough."

"But it can't be."

Before she could anticipate the movement, the girl slipped past her and raced down the stairs. Alexandra followed as fast as she could. But the girl was too quick for her. She was nowhere to be seen when Alexandra reached the street.

Only then did she comprehend the meaning of the generous subterfuge. She stood staring down at the money in her hand--two half-crowns, given her by a servant!