Merrick Leonard
The Quaint Companions
CHAPTER III
He went early in the afternoon, and he found her more cordial than on Marine Parade, though he gathered that she had been unprepared to see him so soon. He was shown into a small back parlour reserved for the family's own use, and when he entered she was in a rocking-chair with her baby on her lap. At his playful advances it began to cry, and it wailed continuously while he paid it the usual compliments, and heard that it was fifteen months old, and christened "Vivian."
"The only one?" he asked, as the noise subsided.
"Yes," she said, "I lost my little girl. How nice of you to remember your promise! I made sure you'd forget."
"That was very wicked of you. You ought to have known better; didn't I show you what sort of a memory I've got?"
"Well, really you did! I can't think how you knew me again."
"Why, you haven't changed much," he said, "you were just as good-looking then."
"Don't be so foolish." She bent over the baby.
"I knew you directly I caught sight of you. You were just coming out of the house."
"What, this house? Were you passing?"
He nodded, grinning. "And I followed you into Preston Street."
"I saw you in Preston Street," she said. "You came into the greengrocer's, didn't you?"
"Yes, but first I'd had to wait outside a fishmonger's. Oh, I had a heap of trouble before I got a chance to speak to you, I can tell you! You looked so – Lee was 'fraid!"
"Did I?" She gave him instinctively the glance she would have given to a white man. "Oh, I had no idea who you were, you know. I thought – "
"Thought my admiration infernal cheek, eh? Didn't you look me up and down when I came to the seat! 'Sir, how dare you?' you meant. I knew!" His jolly laughter shook him, and startled the baby into a fresh outbreak.
"Well, I was all right when I understood, now wasn't I? – There, there, pet, suck his ribbons, and let his mummy talk! – Do you know, I've got something to ask you, Mr. Lee; after you had gone it struck me you might be able to give me a hint. I want to make use of my voice; I thought perhaps you would tell me the best way to set about it? I have written to people already, but they don't answer, and – His mummy will have to send him away if he isn't quiet."
"Make use of your voice?" he said doubtfully. "Oh yes, I'll help you with pleasure if there's anything I can do, but what is it you mean?"
"I was thinking of concert singing; only in a small way, of course – I know I can't expect to do anything marvellous – but I've had a lot of lessons, and in Liverpool I used to practise hard. My master – If you'll excuse me for a minute, I'll take Baby upstairs."
He excused her for that purpose readily, and when she came back her mother was with her. He found that Mrs. Tremlett had altered too, but in the most surprising way. When he was a lad she had looked quite old to him, and now she looked only middle-aged. She was the widow of a novelist who had written such beautiful prose that many people had been eager to meet him – once. Afterwards they talked less about his prose than his manners. He had left her, their daughter, a policy for five hundred pounds, and an album of carefully pasted Press cuttings. During his life she had suffered with him in furnished apartments; at his death she took to letting them. She was a well-meaning, weak-natured creature. For forty years she had related her dream of the previous night over the breakfast-table, and read the morning paper after supper. She religiously preserved the reviews, which she had never understood; believed that Darwin was a monomaniac who said we sprang from monkeys; and that Mrs. Hemans had written the most beautiful poetry in the world.
"Mother was quite excited when she heard I had seen you," said Mrs. Harris. "Weren't you, mother?"
"You were a very bad girl. What do you think, Mr. Lee? She came home and said that a – that a" – she gulped – "a strange man had stopped and spoken to her. Such a thing to say! And she didn't tell me who it was for ever so long."
He understood that he had been referred to as a "nigger." She deprecated her blunder to the younger woman with worried eyes, and the latter struck in hastily:
"I was just telling Mr. Lee what I want to do, mother. He thinks he might help me."
"Oh, now I'm sure that's very kind of him indeed! You see, Mr. Lee, it's not altogether nice for Ownie here, and of course having had a home of her own, she feels it more still. Well, dear, you do, it's no good denying it! If she had something to take her out of herself a little it would be so good for her in every way; and we always thought she would make money with her voice – it's a magnificent one, really."
Mrs. Harris shrugged her shoulders. "To talk about its being 'magnificent' in front of Mr. Lee is rather funny. But if I could make even a second-rate position," she went on, "I should be satisfied. I'd try for an engagement in a comic opera if I thought I could act, but I'm afraid I should be no good on the stage, and one has to start in such tiny parts. We had a lady staying with us who used to be in the profession, and she was telling us how hard the beginning was."
"And do you imagine that concert-engagements are to be had for the asking?" he said. "Good heavens! But of course you don't know anything about the musical world – how should you?"
"I don't imagine that they are to be had for the asking," she returned a shade tartly; "but if one can sing well enough, the platform must be easier for a woman like me than the stage, by all accounts."
"Accounts," he echoed, "whose accounts? I could give you accounts that would make your hair stand up. Do you know that professional singers, with very fine voices, come over from the Colonies to try to get an appearance here and find they can't do it? They eat up all the money that they've saved and go back beggared. They go back beaten and beggared. It is happening all the time. My dear girl, you couldn't make a living on the concert-stage under five years if you had the voice of an Angel."
"Not if I had bad luck, I daresay," she muttered.
"I tell you nobody can do it – it isn't to be done. It would take you five years to earn a bare living if you were a Miracle. The Americans and Australians try it for two or three and clear out with broken hearts and empty pockets. It's killing; they starve while they are struggling to be heard. I'll give you an example; a singer with a glorious voice came to England —I say it, 'glorious.' I won't mention his name, it wouldn't be fair; but, mind, this is a fact! He had worked hard in his own country – they believed in him there; they got up a benefit for him before he sailed. He had three thousand pounds when he landed – and he spent every penny trying to get a footing here and went home in despair… Do you know that when I give a concert, even artists who are making a living go to my agent, and offer him twenty, twenty-five, thirty guineas to be allowed to sing at it?"
"They pay to be allowed to sing?" said Mrs. Tremlett. "But why should they do that?"
"Because they can't get into a fashionable programme without; and it's worth paying for. Singers who have been at the game half their lives do it, I tell you. I'm not supposed to know. I don't get their money; I leave the agent to engage the people to support me, and if he makes a bit extra over the affair – well, he forgets to talk to me about it! But it's a usual thing. 'Easy for a woman'?" He turned to Mrs. Harris again, and rolled his black head. "Easy? Poor soul! She looks so fine, doesn't she, when she sweeps down the platform in her satin dress and lays her bouquet on the piano? Oh, dear Lord! if you knew what she has gone through to get there. And what it has cost her to get there. And how she has pigged to buy the bouquet and the satin dress. You think if you can sing, that's all that's wanted, do you? You can wait and beg for years before an agent will hear your singing. And when you are heard at last – if your production is first-rate, and the quality pleases him, and you are a smart and agreeable woman, and you have found him at the right moment – he will ask: 'How many pounds' worth of tickets will you guarantee?'"
"And in spite of everything, some women get on!" she said. "One would think nobody had ever had an immense success, to hear you talk. One would think there had never been a Patti, or – "
"Ah, Jehoshaphat! An immense success? With an immense success – when it comes – you're the cock of the walk. When a woman has made an 'mmense success' she can fill the Albert Hall, and move the world. She can move even the English, and hold them breathless in the gallery, though they have got no chairs and the notices forbid them to sit on the floor. The singers who make 'immense successes' are the kings and queens. They mayn't be able to act, or to talk – they may be as stupid as geese; but God has given them this wonderful power; nobody knows why… And sometimes with His other hand He gives them a black skin; nobody knows why!"
At the unexpected reference to his colour, Mrs. Tremlett started as if she had been pinched; and her daughter murmured:
"Well, I thought you might be able to do something for me. I see you only think that I'm very foolish."
"I haven't heard you yet. I just warn you what sort of a life it is at the beginning. I'd do any blessed thing I could for you. What is your voice? Come, sing to me now!"
"Oh! not now, Ownie," exclaimed the landlady; "the drawing-room people are in, dear, and you know they complain so of every sound."
"You are still called 'Ownie,' I see," he said.
"Mother used to call me her 'little own, her little ownie,' when I was no higher than that, I believe " – she raised her hand about a foot from the table – "and I have been 'Ownie' ever since; I suppose I shall never be anything else now, though I was christened 'Lilian Augusta.' My voice is contralto. I'll sing to you the next time you are here – if the lodgers are out," she added with a harsh laugh. "One must consider the lodgers. The lodgers heard Baby crying in the night and were surprised we didn't keep it in the coal-cellar. At least that's what they seemed to mean."
"Oh, my dear," protested Mrs. Tremlett feebly, "I'm sure they didn't mean that. Mrs. Wilcox had gone to bed with a bad headache, and was just dropping off to sleep. She only said – "
"She complained when she thought it belonged to the dining-rooms; when she heard it was mine, she was astonished at the impudence of a landlady's daughter in having a baby. Oh, I'm not finding any fault with what she said" – but her tone was very resentful – "a lodging-house isn't the place for a child, I know! It's a little hard on poor Baby, perhaps, that's all."
Lee felt very glad, when he rose, that the piano had not been opened. That she was inhabiting a castle in the air he had no doubt whatever, and he flinched from the task of shattering it. The woman of thirty-two who had had "a lot of lessons" was now a pathetic as well as an alluring figure to him; and she did not lose her pathos in the following days, for he often met her, and she never failed to recur to her desire. In their earliest meetings she was considerably abashed in walking beside him, and being conscious of his colour at every step, always declared herself bound for the least frequented parts. But soon she lost much of this embarrassment, and even came to take a nervous pride in the increased attention she attracted. She reminded herself that it was not as if she were with an ordinary negro, or as if he were a famous negro who wasn't recognised. Nearly all the people they passed knew he was Elisha Lee, and there was nothing to be ashamed of in being seen with him. He looked less repulsive to her, too, on acquaintance. She now remembered having noticed niggers with much wider nostrils than those that had looked so wide to her a week ago; and his lips didn't seem to protrude so much as they had done at first. It was a pity they were so dark. If it hadn't been for his lips he really would not have been repugnant at all; there was nothing to make one shudder in a merely black skin when one grew used to seeing it, and he carried himself splendidly. As to his ears, if they had only been white, they would have been the prettiest ears she had ever seen on a man; little delicate ears, set close to his head. And he could interest her. Like most of his People, he told a good story well, and he was full of anecdotes of the musical celebrities. It made her feel nearer to the platform, to be admitted to the artists' room in his confidences.
But though she hankered after the platform, and spoke of her ambition daily, she was not an ambitious woman in the sense in which many women are ambitious who besiege the offices of the musical and dramatic agents. She was a dissatisfied woman; it was not notoriety she thirsted for so much as means. She wanted money – the road by which she earned it was a detail. If somebody had left her an independence, she would not have been eager to sing at all. Her life was sour to her. As a schoolgirl she had understood that her prettiness was damaged by her surroundings; when she was twelve years old she had felt that the hateful card, printed "Furnished Apartments," in the window ticketed her "cheap." It was the first card to deteriorate that square that has fallen from grace. The society in which girls went to dances and sat on the stairs with rich young men, was as unattainable as a carriage-and-pair. She had nothing to expect; she looked down on the tradespeople, and the residents looked down on her. She couldn't even write novels as her father had done, and hope to escape her environment in that way.
She had married when she was five-and-twenty – not so soon as she would have married in happier circumstances; not so well as she would have married but for the card in the window. She married a furrier. Even this had been an improvement for her; she wore her first sealskin, and tasted the joy of comparative extravagance. But the business had failed and the bankrupt had died; and then there was nothing for her but the Brighton lodgings again.
It was in his sitting-room in the hotel that she at last sang to Lee. He had asked her and Mrs. Tremlett to luncheon – wondering how much he could contrive to spend on it – but the landlady had declared it was impossible for her to leave the house, and Ownie had come alone – "for ten minutes, just to hear his opinion."
She had begged him to let her sing the song through without interrupting her, and he said nothing until she finished. It had hurt him very much to hear her sing; for a few minutes he had almost forgotten her eyes and hair. His thick black fingers lingered on the final chord of the accompaniment with thankfulness and with dismay; he did not know how to undeceive her.
"Well?" she demanded.
He struck E, F, and F sharp, still hesitating. "You use too much force there in swelling the tone of your head voice," he said. "Those are your weak notes – they are mine too. They are the weak notes with all tenors and sopranos. After G the crescendo is easy enough, but the E, F, and F sharp are devils."
"You call my voice soprano?" she exclaimed. "Why, my range is – "
"Range? Did your master tell you that the range makes the voice contralto or soprano? It's the colour of tone, not that." He kept striking and re-striking the notes without looking at her. She observed the diamonds on his hands enviously.
"Do you – are you trying to tell me I'm no good?" she asked with a little gasp.
"You have been badly taught," he said, "awfully badly. I expected it. Your voice has never been placed."
"Thank you," she said. "It's kind of you to be candid." She was very pale. "I suppose there's nothing I can do to – to make it all right?"
"I'm afraid not," said Lee.
"And all because I've been badly taught?"
"Oh, I don't say that. It has done harm of course – the natural colour of the voice isn't there; but I don't think – if you want me to tell you the truth – I don't think you could ever have done what you hoped under any circumstances."
There was a long silence. Then she forced a smile, and put out her hand.
"Good-bye," she said.
"You're not going like that? Ah, you make me feel a beast! Do you want it so much? Think of the hardships you'd have to go through, even if you could make a start. Cheer up! Things aren't so bad after all."
"Aren't they?" she muttered. She sank into a chair. "Why?"
"You aren't obliged to earn a living – you have a home, anyhow. Plenty of women haven't that; there are plenty of them worse off than you, I give you my word!"
"There aren't," she cried, "there's nobody worse off than I am! Some people are resigned to drig on all their lives and never have enough of anything. I'm not resigned. I hate the scrimping and scraping, and the peal of the lodgers' bells, and the drabs of servants who think they can be impudent to you because you 'let.' I'm sick, sick, sick of it all. I got away from it once, and now I'm in a back parlour again, with never a soul to speak to. How would you like it? But you don't know what loneliness means. How can you understand what I feel – you?"
"Why should you say I can't understand?" he answered. "Because my name is printed in large letters on the bills, and I've got all that you want? I haven't got all that I want. Doesn't it strike you that inside here I may feel all that a white man feels, though no white woman will ever feel the same for me? Ah, that's news to you, eh? But it's true. People say of fools like me, 'Oh, he keeps low company, he's happiest in the gutter.' Liars! Some of us take what we can get, that's all. The moon we cry for is over our heads, and we make shift with its reflection in the puddle. I do know what loneliness, means – when I let myself think about it. Do I think about it often? No, not me, I'm not such a blooming fool: I enjoy. But the knowledge is there, and the loneliness is worse than yours. Money? I make pots of money – I never sing under eighty pounds – money isn't everything. You see these rings? They cost – Lord knows! – three hundred. I'll give them to you. All of them: here – one, two, three, four!" He threw them into her lap. "They belong to you now. Are you quite happy? No, you're not; you still want something. Well, with me it's the same. I still want something – and I shall go wanting all my life."
"So shall I," she returned. She picked the rings up one by one, and held them out to him with a sigh.
"What, you won't keep them?" he inquired. Though his impulse had taken a theatrical form, it was quite sincere.
"Keep them?" She looked at him amazed. "Do you mean to say you really gave them to me to keep?"
"Why shouldn't I give them to you? I'll give you anything you like. Go on, put them on, or – they're too big for you – put them in your pocket. Yes, I mean it – they're yours."
"Oh," she exclaimed, "I can't keep things from you like – But you're joking?"
"I mean it," he repeated. "Bless me, why not? I want you to have them. They're a present."
"You must be mad," she faltered: "I can't accept presents from you. It's very kind of you – very generous – but it isn't possible."
He extended his hand an inch at the time. She laid them in the yellowish palm, and watched him slip them over the finger-nails that looked as if they were bruised. Her heart dropped heavily.
"It wasn't rude to offer them to you, was it?" he asked. "I didn't mean to offend you, you know."
"I'm not offended," she said. "But – but ladies can't take presents from men – not valuable presents, hundreds of pounds' worth of rings."
"Mustn't I give you anything?"
The rings magnetised her; she couldn't wrench her gaze from them.
"What for? Are you so sorry for me – the idiot who thought she could sing?"
"It's not that; it's nothing to do with your singing. Sweets? May I give you sweets?"
"I" – her eyelids fell – "I suppose so."
"What else?"
"Why should you give me anything at all?"
"Because I want to; because I – like you, Ownie… Tell me what I can get for you."
He leant nearer to her. She quivered in realising what he meant. Her physical impulse was to repel him, and the cravings of her mind tempted her to let him hope. She hesitated a moment.
"Get me some sweets, then," she said unsteadily. "I must go, or I shall be late."