Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  The two girls walked down the room towards the door. As they reached our table I stood up and made a place for Jill Leslie by the side of Imogen on the bench against the wall. Letty Ransome said: “Good night! I must hurry,” and passed along and out. The waiter brought a chair for me which he placed at the end of our little table. And Jill the next moment was seated between us. I think that she had not meant to sit down. She had intended to make an excuse and go away with Letty Ransome. But she had been taken by surprise and she looked from one to the other of us with a wild fear. She was between us, she had been captured, she half rose and sat down again. She cried out in a sharp, low voice:

  “It’s no good. There’s nothing more. The others stripped us to the skin.”

  “We want nothing at all. Neither of us ever played at the big table,” I said. “Imogen would like you to have coffee with us. That’s all.”

  “Why?” asked Jill Leslie. She was still looking from one to the other of us, less afraid but more bewildered. She gave me the impression of an animal caught in a trap.

  “Why? Why?” she repeated, and for answer Imogen laid a hand upon her arm and ordered the coffee. Jill Leslie set her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands.

  “All those people there — most of them, anyway — they were horrible. They threatened us. Prison! Oh!” and her shoulders worked. “And lots of them had won.... It was only now and then that Robin... Oh, why be kind to me?” She turned to Imogen. “I brought people there.... Yes, you guessed it.... But they had it all back... and more, too. They had everything.”

  “Your pearls, too?” said Imogen gently.

  “Of course,” answered Jill Leslie. “You see, there was Robin.... They threatened him. Everything had to go.”

  “Except the sapphire,” said Imogen, and Jill Leslie’s hand darted up to her throat to make sure that the chain was still about her neck.

  “I meant to keep that if I could,” she said in a low voice. “You don’t know. Oh! — —”

  Jill Leslie was labouring under an excitement which I did not understand. Her hands fluttered, her eyes shone unnaturally bright. The little restaurant was almost empty now, and Jill Leslie, moved by Imogen’s tenderness, poured out the strangest story to us, the strangers of an hour ago.

  “I was in a convent school in Kensington — it’s only two years ago. I was studying music. I can sing — I can really sing. I was eighteen. I used to go out, of course, for my singing lessons. A girl at one of my classes introduced Robin to me. It wasn’t just the sort of thing a schoolgirl dreams about. At once it wasn’t. From the first I knew that this was my man. He might be anything — all that the fine people in the room at Savile Row called him — it didn’t matter. I belonged to him if he wanted me. And he did want me.”

  She had been talking under her breath with her hands pressed to her forehead and her head bent. But she lifted it up now. There were tears upon her cheeks, but the glimmer of a smile about her lips.

  “We had no plans. I suppose we felt that the world would fall down on its knees and make a path for us. I was allowed to go out at night every now and then to concerts and the opera with my singing mistress. She was a darling. One night, without telling her anything — I used a concert at the Queen’s Hall as an excuse and said that some friends had invited me. I went with Robin to a musical play at the Hippodrome. It was divine to me. I had all the colour and the bright dresses and the dancing and the music in front of me, and Robin at my side. I was off the earth altogether. There are times, an hour, a moment, when you live.” She looked again from one to the other of us, but no longer in fear. “I expect both of you know — something like music itself — beyond words, beyond even thought which you can understand. We went on to a supper club afterwards, Robin all fine in a white tie and shiny shoes, and me in a little schoolgirl’s evening dress. The waiters knew him. My, but I was proud! There were lovely grown-up women in gorgeous gowns and jewels. I had to keep hold of Robin’s arm, I was so sure one of them would snatch him away from me. And my heart kept thumping away until I thought I’d die. We danced. I was afraid to get up in my little white silk frock amongst all those goddesses. But Robin said that they’d all give me their jewels and gowns in exchange for my youth and freshness and have much the better of the bargain. So we danced. Oh, dear! — the moment we danced there was nothing anywhere but us two dancing. No supper-room, no people, just a sort of lovely swooning music and we two dancing to it in a mist. When we went back to our table... there was a clock over the door exactly opposite to us — a big clock like a sun with gold rays sticking out all round it. I looked at the clock. It was two in the morning.”

  Jill Leslie stopped to take breath. She had been pouring out her story in a seething jumble of words. She had to tell it to the first pair of sympathetic ears she met with; and here was Imogen, her friendly soul inviting confessions, her frank and lovely eyes promising at once secrecy and understanding. I offered a cigarette to Jill and handed to her a red lighter out of my pocket. The little flame lit up the girl’s face with its odd look of strain and wildness. Her hand so shook that she could hardly hold her cigarette still and the flame wavered so that I thought she would never light it at all.

  “Could I have something to drink?” she asked.

  There was still a glass of champagne left in our bottle. I poured it out for her.

  “Will that do?”

  Jill Leslie nodded her thanks and drank the wine down, throwing up her head as though her throat were parched.

  “I was frightened out of my wits for a moment. I couldn’t go back to the convent. It was too late. If I had gone, I might not have got in. If I had got in I should have been expelled the next morning,” Jill resumed. “But the next morning I was glad. It was up to Robin, you see. He took me home with him. The flat in Savile Row was his then. He had lots of money. I suppose he had made it in the same way. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I was with him. He sent out for clothes for me the next morning. We went to Paris. He gave me my pearls there. In the autumn we started off round the world. We went to the West Indies, Panama, the South Seas, Tokio, Java — it was wonderful. We were two years on the journey. Imagine it! No school, no nuns, colour and heat and light, and new amusing things to see every day. And at Colombo he bought me this sapphire — —”

  She broke off at this point abruptly.

  “You brought a man with you to Savile Row,” she said.

  “Michael Crowther,” said I.

  “I didn’t like him.”

  “Why?”

  “He was” — Jill searched for a word— “secret. He was thinking all the time of one thing but you weren’t to know what it was until he sprung it on you.”

  I laughed.

  “That’s a pretty good description of Michael.”

  “I like people to be natural and friendly. I don’t want them to crab other people or be sarcastic or mysterious. I like them to fit in and take their part with the rest. They needn’t be clever so long as they’re bright. But that man! He was an iceberg.”

  “But, my dear,” said Imogen, “you hardly spoke to him. He went away with us.”

  “But he came back,” said Jill.

  I was startled.

  “That night?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he had lost nothing. One small stake, perhaps.”

  “He didn’t come back for money,” said Jill. “I didn’t at that time know why he had come back. He made an excuse downstairs that he had left his hat and coat behind. Otherwise the door-keeper wouldn’t have let him in again. When he came upstairs I was standing by Robin. I couldn’t leave Robin to face all that riot of people with only poor Jack Sanford. Jack was just like a suet pudding, wasn’t he? So I stood by Robin and whilst the others were demanding their money your friend asked me if I was Jill Leslie, and when I said that I was, he thought that if I gave him our address he might be able to help us. I was sure there was a snag somewhere, but we were up against it, anyway. Jack Sanf
ord owned the flat. We two were living in Berkeley Street and I gave him the address. Of course, we have moved since. We are down and out.”

  She turned to Imogen.

  “Do you know what he wants?”

  “Yes,” said Imogen.

  “What?”

  “The sapphire.”

  Jill nodded her head.

  “Funny, isn’t it? He offered quite a price for it. But it’ll be the last thing I’ll let go. I never took it to Jack Sanford’s because I was afraid that I might lose it. I have only got to take it in my hand and I can go all round the world again. And I’m hoping now that I shan’t have to let it go at all.”

  “So things are better,” I suggested.

  “A little. I told you I could sing, didn’t I? I’ve got a small part in a new comic opera called Dido.”

  The newspapers had during the last week or two been discreetly peppered with details of that stupendous production to be. We were all on edge for it, or supposed to be. We certainly should be when the night of the first performance came. We knew of the famous comedian who was to play the pious Æneas, of the great producer already on his way from Berlin, of the witty libretto which had actually arrived from Hammersmith, of the dresses and scenery to be designed by the modish young artist from Chelsea. We had heard of the music — we were to have melodies instead of a rhythm with a saxophone — and how all Europe was being ransacked for a singer who would graft on the wildness of lovely Dido the sparkle of an exquisite gaiety.

  “You’re to be in Dido?” I cried. “We’ll come on the first night and cheer you.”

  “You won’t notice me,” said Jill. “I’ve a little bit of a part and just enough of a salary, I think, to allow me to keep my sapphire.”

  She got up; and all at once the life had gone out of her. Her face had lost its colour, her mouth drooped, her eyes were dull.

  “I must go,” she said. She held out a hand to each of us. “You have been very kind. I thank you both very much. You have been sweet to me. But we begin to rehearse to-morrow, and I must go home and rest.”

  She went off with a listless step and passed out by the door into the tiny porch. Through the upper glass panel of the door we saw her open her handbag. She spilled something upon her thumbnail and then raised it to her nostrils.

  “I was sure of it,” said Imogen.

  “Cocaine?”

  Imogen nodded.

  “Poor little girl!” said she.

  Imogen was silent for a few moments afterwards. We were quite alone in the little restaurant now and rather in the way. For a waiter in his shirt-sleeves was removing the table-cloths and piling the tables one upon the other with a quite unnecessary noise. Imogen, however, was unaware of these resounding hints. She said:

  “You’ll understand now, Martin, why I didn’t tell Crowther that she was the girl who had the sapphire. I wanted to have a talk with her.”

  “And now that you have talked with her?” I asked.

  “Yes, there we are,” said Imogen.

  And there, indeed, we were. On the one side Michael and his far-away pagoda and the compulsion we were all under to help him in his quest. On the other hand this little unhappy girl who had only to hold the sapphire in her hand to live again in the warmth and joy of her tropical adventure.

  “What are we to do?” cried Imogen. “I believe that she’s the sort of girl who wouldn’t sell but would give that sapphire back, once she knew Michael’s story. And then be heart-broken because she had done it.” She was troubled. “What are we to do, Martin?”

  I looked at the wall opposite and said:

  “Is not the peacock a beautiful bird?”

  Chapter 20 The First Night of Dido

  JILL LESLIE HAD gone before it struck either Imogen or myself how much of her story she had left out. Her life might have begun at her convent school for all that she had told us. There had not been a word of a home or of parents or of other friends that she had made for herself. After she had gone off with her Robin, no enquiry seemed to have been made for her, and certainly no search. It was not as though she had been deliberately separating one phase of her youth for us, and keeping the rest secret. She had been talking without control. We could speculate about it as we chose, but I was persuaded that Jill knew no more than what she had told us, that outside the school she had no home and was acknowledged by no parents. And we never did know any more. Jill stood in a solitary relief against the social web with its infinite threads. She must make her own path and find her own counsellors. It was this circumstance, dimly surmised at once by Imogen and only now understood by me, which so keenly enlisted our sympathies and rather dulled our enthusiasm in Michael Crowther’s behalf. Jill was no doubt a wayward and wicked little girl, but she was a good fighter, she was constant to her lover through good fortune and through ill, and for whatever harm she did, she paid.

  Jill, then, went off to her rehearsals, Imogen and I to the settlement of our affairs and Michael Crowther dropped once more out of sight. Our marriage was to take place towards the end of July.

  “You see, if we arrange that,” said Imogen, “we might go to Munich, mightn’t we, for the first fortnight of August and the Wagner Festival and then run down to Venice?”

  “We might certainly do that,” said I.

  “Martin, why don’t you suggest something?” she asked.

  “Because, my darling, if anything goes wrong with our honeymoon, I want to be able to blame you and not you me,” I answered.

  “I think I shall have to turn Pamela on to you,” said Imogen thoughtfully. “She knows the right words.”

  Pamela was to be a bridesmaid, so I was not alarmed. I had the whip hand of the bridesmaids. One word of insolence — even the right word — and they got a bouquet instead of a diamond buckle.

  It was just a week before the wedding when Michael Crowther paid me a visit. He was looking thoroughly discouraged. It was seven o’clock in the evening. He would take nothing but a seat, and he dropped into that as if he would never get up out of it again.

  “You’re tired,” I said.

  He nodded his head.

  “Walking about.” He bent forward with his hands clasped between his knees. “I don’t know what I am going to do.”

  “I can tell you one thing you can do,” I replied briskly. “You can come to my wedding.”

  Crowther shook his head.

  “No, I can’t do that.”

  His answer was immediate and decided.

  “Oh, indeed! My mistake!” said I, and I suppose that my face and voice both showed that I had taken offence. For he hastened to add:

  “You’re not misunderstanding me, Mr. Legatt. If I were to go to a wedding it would surely be to yours. But, of course, it’s out of the question that I should go to any.”

  That, for a moment, puzzled me. Here were we in London with the sunlight pouring into the room and the low roar of the streets floating through the open windows. Here was Michael dressed in a dark lounge suit like any other man of my acquaintance. It was difficult for one so full of his affairs as I was to realise that half a world stood between us two and our creeds. I sat down opposite to him.

  “Wait a moment, Michael.”

  I transported myself to Burma. The priests of his creed were in no sense ministers. Their concern was with their own souls and the smoothest path to extinction. They neither sat by the beds of the sick nor shared in their rejoicings. And of all festivals to be avoided a marriage was the first. They looked forward to the cessation of life that is and not the creation of life to be. Of course Michael would never come to my wedding.

  “Yes, I understand now. But I am sorry.”

  Ever since the night when Imogen had tempted him to renounce his purpose I had had a suspicion that he might do so. He had so brusquely and definitely fled from her questions and her company. I am sure that he was shaken, that he had savoured his moment of authority with a thrill of keen pleasure. But the weakness had passed. He was the man of
the yellow robe masquerading as a denizen of the world and seeing his corner in his monastery at Pagan still barred away from him like a harbour behind a reef.

  “You tried to buy back your sapphire,” I said.

  “And I failed. To-day I am farther away from it than ever.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  He drew out of a pocket a folded evening paper. He unfolded it and handed it to me.

  “Read!”

  The first item of the issue which leaped to my eye was a picture of Jill Leslie. Side by side were the pleasant chubby features of the famous manager who was responsible for the production of Dido. Across the top of the two columns of letterpress which these pictures adorned was printed in large capitals:

  DIDO DISCOVERED.

  AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. DAVID C. DONALD.

  I read that the discovery had really been made some while ago. Miss Jill Leslie off the stage had all the qualities which the leading part required, a lovely voice, humour, liveliness, a note of passion and a grace of movement. If she could reproduce these gifts behind the footlights Mr. Donald would have earned the gratitude of the public by presenting to it a new young prima donna.

  * * * * *

  “‘But,’ said Mr. Donald smiling, ‘to quote a manager who has preceded me, there was the rub. Would Miss Leslie come over the footlights? If so, I had the ideal representative of Dido. In order not to alarm her by too big a task and perhaps dishearten her in the end, I engaged her for a small part. Then I asked her to oblige me, whilst I was negotiating for a leading lady, to read Dido’s part at our rehearsals and in return I would give her the understudy.’”

  Miss Leslie, it appeared, obliged with the greatest success, triumphed over the nervousness natural to one in her position and gave Mr. Donald confidence that he need look no further.

  “‘Yesterday evening, just before our first dress rehearsal,’ Mr. Donald continued, ‘I told her that she was to play the part and, of course, receive a salary commensurate with its importance. We open at Manchester on Monday night, play the opera for a month in that town and come to London early in September.’”