Chapter XXVI

The landlady of 109 Sidey Street opened the door to Maggy.

"Goodness me!" were her first words. "Whatever have you been doing to yourself, Miss Delamere? You _are_ thin!"

"I've had appendicitis," said Maggy.

Mrs. Bell's face immediately indicated the thirsty interest which people of her class take in any form of illness. She closed the door carefully. A hushed note came into her voice.

"Appendicitis! What did they find?"

"Latchkey and a bath mat," said Maggy solemnly.

Mrs. Bell looked offended, also disappointed.

"What a one you always were for jokes," she complained. "I believe you'd joke in your coffin. Talking of coffins--"

"I hope you've not been talking of such things to Miss Hersey," Maggy interrupted.

"Not talk about them? And she just come back from a funeral! What else would _any one_ talk about? Not that _she_ said much, mind you. I only know there was a carriage-full of wreaths besides what was in the hearse. I'll have to wait for the rest of it in the Sunday paper. Miss Hersey wouldn't say what the corpse looked like."

Mrs. Bell was wound up. Maggy knew that the only way to avoid a repetition of the ghoulish verbosity from which Alexandra must already have suffered was to get away.

"Where is Miss Hersey?" she asked, beginning to mount the stairs. "Same room?"

"No; a shunter from King's Cross has that now. Such a nice-spoken young feller. Miss Hersey's in the room with the cistern. I'll bring you up a nice cup of tea directly, dear. I won't put it down in her bill," she whispered in a burst of generosity.

Upstairs in the room with the cistern the two girls ran into one another's arms. But Maggy was not to escape a repetition of the scrutiny that Mrs. Bell had given her downstairs. After their embrace Alexandra drew back and looked at her with concern.

"Maggy!" she exclaimed. "Have you been ill? There's nothing of you."

"Rubbish!" said Maggy. "It's all over, anyway. I'm what they call _svelte_ in the society papers. I was all face and fatness before. Fred says I'm a lady-like size now. It's the 'Willow' corset. I'm in the _Ladies' Field_ this week. Such a sketch! Just a chemise and-- But don't let's talk about me. Lexie, I wanted to ask you something. Mrs. Lambert wrote to me two or three times, and I wrote to her. Do you know if she tore the letters up?"

"I found them. Lord Chalfont asked me to look through a lot of her papers, and your letters were there. They were marked in pencil 'Destroy.' I expect she meant to have done it, so I tore them up myself. There were three letters and a postcard. I couldn't help seeing what was on the postcard--'All over, Maggy.' What did you mean?"

Under her paint and powder Maggy flushed a little.

"Oh, that was--about my illness. Thank you for destroying the letters, Lexie. There was nothing in them I couldn't have told you, but they were about things you'd rather not know."

"Then you have been ill?"

"Rest cure, my dear. Forget it."

"I'm not hurt because you wrote to her about it instead of me."

"You needn't be. Was it nice being with her?"

Alexandra told her all about the tour. While she talked Maggy began to notice a subtle change in her. Her views seemed to have grown broader. She appeared to be more tolerant of human failings. Her old, hard attitude toward them had disappeared. She showed this by the manner in which she spoke of Mrs. Lambert and Chalfont. It was entirely sympathetic.

"Lexie, you're different," declared Maggy in surprise when she had done. "You've come alive!"

"I don't feel quite the same," Alexandra admitted. "I believe I'm--changing. I've been trying to think things out, Maggy." There was puzzledom in her voice.

"What sort of things?"

"Principally morals and--lack of morals.... Not long ago I had everything neatly labeled and pigeon-holed in my mind. Things were either good or bad. People the same. Now all the labels seem to have come off.... Really, I'm not half so good as poor Mrs. Lambert was, and yet she did what I always considered so wrong. She lived with Lord Chalfont. The strange thing is it didn't make either of them bad. They were just like two married people who had the deepest respect for each other."

Maggy gave a nod of comprehension. "And that puzzles you?" she asked.

"Yes, in a way."

"I think I know why. You're asking yourself whether that sort of thing is really bad, after all, since it didn't drag them down. You've got the labels wrong, mixing up morals with people and putting them all together in the honey-pot. The stage, I mean. It's a contaminating place, right enough. The wonder is how anybody gets out of it clean. Some people can drink filthy water and keep healthy, and others get typhoid from it. It doesn't alter the water. What makes me sorry is that nice people like Mrs. Lambert and Lord Chalfont and you should have to drink it at all. The worst of it is you can't tell whether it's done you any harm until it's worked right into your system, and then you're generally past help. That rather proves that immorality is a sort of disease, probably a microbe, which thrives especially on the stage. What a pity they can't vaccinate us against it when we're babies. It would have done _me_ good. _I'm_ an example of the corruption of the stage, if you're looking for one."

"You're nothing of the kind, Maggy!"

"Yes, I am. If I hadn't been on the stage Fred wouldn't have thought I was easy fruit, and I shouldn't have known what he wanted from the start. I went over the line because I knew living with him was all he expected, or I could expect. I don't say I wouldn't rather be married and respectable, but as I couldn't have Fred that way, I've got to put up without it. Marriage and the stage are like oil and vinegar. They don't mix. Look at Mrs. Lambert and her husband. Look at the girls who marry noblemen. Don't they keep the divorce court busy? And you can't do any good on the stage without a man at the back of you. Make up your mind to that. You've got to bury your conscience like a dog does a bone. At first you keep on going back to it to see if it's there, and one day you forget all about it, or you find it's gone. That's the big difference between you and the dog.... So you've come back to this hole, Lexie. Do you think I don't know what you feel about it? You're like Cinderella, only you've been to the funeral of your fairy god-mother. I suppose you'll hold out while your money lasts, and then begin the old fight all over again. But there won't be so much fight left in you. You don't _feel_ like fighting. You don't feel the same. You said so, just now.... Lexie dear, don't think of your old pal Maggy as a she-devil taking you up on top of a mountain and tempting you. But I do want you to make the most of your chances. I honestly believe if you take things as they come you won't be sorry. You're sure to meet some nice man sometime. If he's able to--to keep you, do give in. If you love him you'll want to. And what's the use of giving love the cold shoulder simply because he doesn't always go about with a marriage license in his pocket? If it's wrong to talk like that all I can say is I'd rather love without marriage than not love at all, even though I knew I was going to be burnt to a cinder for it."

"Perhaps I'm asbestos--"

"All the better if you are: you'll stand it better. Anyhow, asbestos gets hot.... Lexie, I haven't a regret in the world. I was a bit down on my luck before I was ill, but now I'm well again, I'm glad that I'm Maggy who loves her Fred."

Alexandra sat staring in front of her, turning Maggy's advice over in her mind. She knew she meant every word she said. She recalled Mrs. Lambert's views about the stage. She had less faith in her powers of endurance now. Privation and disappointment had done their work. In easy circumstances any one may withstand temptation: surrender comes with adversity. At the present moment Alexandra was not actually in touch with adversity. She felt capable of holding out against temptation.

"I shan't give in," she said with a little of her old tenacity. "I'm going to try and write."

"What?" asked Maggy blankly.

"My experiences."

"But you haven't had any."

"You and Mrs. Lambert and all that you both have told me are experiences."

This was a new aspect of Alexandra. It mystified Maggy.

"But can you write?" she asked doubtfully.

"I--I think so. At least I've made a beginning."

"It seems so funny. Fred says that actresses can't write. All those things you see in the magazines and the _Jockey's Weekly_ by actresses all about themselves, with photos stuck in between, aren't written by them. The printer does it."

"Not the printer, surely?"

"Well, the man from the paper. It's all the same. I've been interviewed and I know. All I did was to sign my name at the end. It came out in _The Housewife_."

"What I meant was a serious article. Something true."

"But nobody wants to read anything serious about the stage," Maggy contended. "It's for pleasure.... Fancy you writing! Do let me see what you've done, Lexie."

Alexandra went over to the chest of drawers and came back with her article. It was in manuscript. She handed it over shyly.

"Why, it's pages and pages!" exclaimed Maggy, with the bewilderment of one to whom the space on a postcard presents difficulties.

She commenced to read aloud from it.

"'The stage as a profession for women has frequently been a subject of discussion. Seldom however has it occurred to any one to descant on it as a profession for ladies...'

"We're always called _ladies_ of the profession," debated Maggy, and read on.

"'... To do this effectively one must first try and arrive at the proper definition of the term "lady," and when one has done so enquire into the economic and moral effects which the stage may have on her if she should embark on...'"

Maggy raised enquiring, rather helpless, eyes.

"Does this mean you're a Suffragette?" she asked.

"No, of course not."

Maggy skipped a paragraph.

"'A lady, we will say, is one who, apart from the question of birth, has been brought up to respect the usual conventions of social life. Let us now consider how far those conventions are respected on the stage.'"

As she turned the pages, singling out portions of them at random, she found it very hard reading. She thought it like the leaders in the daily paper, which she always skipped. In reality, it was not a bad little article for a beginner, in spite of its consciously correct phraseology and want of cohesion of idea. But as an unglossed commentary concerning the ethical side of stage life it provided food for thought.

"I suppose it's brainy," said Maggy, handing it back. "It doesn't sound a bit like you though. I hope I'm not a wet blanket, but I think you'll get sick of the crumply plop it will make coming back through the letter-box. It's not what you ever see in the papers. You may ask things about inferior flannelette or horrid sausages or white slaves, and it's all right. But the truth about the stage! Well, there, it's written now, so you may as well post it; but if I were you, I'd go and see the editor in the morning before he's had time to read it."

"Why?" enquired Alexandra innocently.

"Well ... if he's young--and impressionable--it might-- No, on second thoughts, don't."

Tea came in. By the side of the teapot Mrs. Bell had ostentatiously placed a small medicine bottle. She had also provided what purported to be a cake.

"I sent out for 'three' of gin," she said, beaming placidly at the bottle.

"Whatever for?" demanded Alexandra.

"For a dash in your tea, dear. Seeing as how you've just come from a funeral--"

Alexandra's face showed a repugnance. Mrs. Bell looked grieved. Maggy intervened.

"Miss Hersey only drinks champagne now," she said cheerily. "Doctor's orders. And I've sworn off. You trot off with it downstairs. Gin's good for landladies."