To Love Part 19

"Only my pride," Joan admitted; but the tears so long held back came in a flood now; she laid her head down on f.a.n.n.y's shoulder and sobbed and sobbed.

The other girl waited till the storm had pa.s.sed; then she rose to her feet and bundling the roses together with an aggressive movement opened the door and flung them out into the pa.s.sage.

"I have got an idea," she said; "you have been about fed up with office for months past. Well, why not chuck it? Come with me. I have got a job in a show that is going on tour next week. There is room in the chorus, I know; come with me, won't you?"

Her earnestness made Joan laugh. "What shall I come as, f.a.n.n.y? I cannot sing, and I have never acted in my life."

"That is nothing," f.a.n.n.y went on impatiently. "You are young, you are pretty; you can dance, I suppose, and look nice. I can get you taken on to-morrow, for old Daddy Brown, that is the manager, is a friend of mine, and while he is a friend he will do anything for me. Oh, come, do come." She caught hold of Joan's hands. "It will be great, we shall be together, and I will show you that there is fun in life; fun, and love, and laughter."

She was laughing herself hysterically, her figure seemed poised as if for an instant outbreak into the dance she spoke of. Joan watched her with envious eyes. f.a.n.n.y's philosophy in life was so plain to see. She took things that came her way with eager hands; she seemed to pa.s.s unscathed, unsullied, through the dregs of life and find mirth in the dreariest surroundings. And to-day Landon had broken down one more barrier of the pride which kept Joan's feet upon the pathway of self-respect. Of what use were her ideals since they could not bring her even one half hour's happiness? The road stretched out in front of her empty and sunless.

These thoughts swept through her mind almost in the s.p.a.ce of a second.

Then she rose quickly to her feet.

"I'll come, f.a.n.n.y," she said; "it really amounts to turning my back on a battle; still I will come."

CHAPTER XVIII

"To fill the hour--that is happiness: to fill The hour and leave no crevice for repentance."

ANON.

"Daddy Brown, this is the girl I spoke to you about; will she do?"

That had been Joan's introduction to the manager of the Brown travelling company. He was a large man, with his neck set in such rolls of fat that quick movement was an impossibility. His eyes, small and surrounded by a mult.i.tude of wrinkles, were bloodshot, but for all that excessively keen. Joan felt as they swept over her that she was being appraised, cla.s.sed, and put aside under her correct value in the man's brain. His hair, which in youth must have grown thick and curly, had fallen off almost entirely from the top of his head, leaving a small island sprouting alone in the midst of the baldness. This was known among the company as "The Danger Mark," for when the skin round it flushed red a fearful storm was brewing for somebody.

He sat in front of a table littered with papers, in a small, rather dirty office, the windows of which opened on to Bedford Street. With the window open, as he kept it, the noise of the Strand traffic was plainly audible.

He eyed Joan slowly and methodically; then his glance turned back to f.a.n.n.y. "What can she do?" he asked heavily.

"Oh, everything," f.a.n.n.y answered with a little gasp; "and she can share my dressing-room and all that."

"Humph!" grunted the man; once more his small, shrewd eyes travelled all over Joan.

"Well, perhaps, she will do." He agreed finally, "Mind you are in time at the station to-morrow. Cut along now, girls, I am busy."

f.a.n.n.y was jubilant all the way home. "I thought I should be able to work it," she bubbled; "it will be fun, honey, to-morrow we are due at Tonbridge and the tour ends at Sevenoaks. All little places this time.

But mind you, it is the first rung of the ladder for you. Brown's is a good company to start with. _Country Girl_, _Merry Widow_, _Waltz Dream_." She ticked them all off on her fingers one by one. "You are glad about it, aren't you?" she broke off suddenly to ask.

"Of course I am glad," Joan answered quickly, "and it is sweet of you to have got it for me. Perhaps I am a little nervous; it strikes me one might get very frightened of Mr. Brown."

"What, Daddy? He is all right if you know how to manage him, and he won't bother you." f.a.n.n.y took a quick look at her. "You aren't his sort."

Was she really glad? Joan pondered the matter over when f.a.n.n.y had at last betaken herself to her own room. At any rate she had, as it were, burnt her boats. She had left the _Evening Herald_, she had told Mrs.

Carew to sublet her rooms. At least it would be good to get away from London for a bit.

Mrs. Carew had been quite frank and decided in her views on the subject.

"For a young lady like you to go off with the likes of 'er," this referred to f.a.n.n.y, "it hardly seems seemly to me, Miss. Not that Miss Bellairs ain't all right in her own way, but it is not your way. Mark my words, Miss, you will regret it."

"And if I do," Joan had answered, "I can always leave and come back here, can't I, Mrs. Carew? I am sure you will always do your best to put me up even if this room is let."

"If I have a corner; Miss, you shall 'ave it and welcome. Nice and quiet young lady you have always been, and I know something of young ladies, I do."

It was evident, even in her efforts to be polite, that she considered Joan's present line of action to be one of deterioration. Was it, after all, a wise move, Joan wondered rather vaguely, as she packed away her few possessions. There was a great deal in f.a.n.n.y's nature that she disapproved of, that could at times even fill her with disgust. In itself, that would merely hold her from ever coming to look at life from f.a.n.n.y's standpoint. And perhaps she would find in the existence, which f.a.n.n.y claimed to be full of love and laughter, something to satisfy the dull aching discontent which had wrenched at her heart all this last summer. Aunt Janet, Uncle John, the old home-life, the atmosphere of love and admiration, these had been torn from her, she needed something to take their place.

They met the rest of the company next day at the station. f.a.n.n.y introduced them all to Joan, rather breathlessly.

"Mr. Strachan, who plays our hero, and who is the idol of the stalls.

Mr. O'Malley, our comic man. Mr. Whistler, who does heavy father parts, wig and all. Mr. Jimmy Rolls, who dances on light toes and who prompts when nothing else is doing. The ladies, honey, take their names on trust, you will find them out sooner or later."

There were, Joan discovered, eight other ladies in the company. She never knew more than four of them. Mrs. O'Malley, Grace Binning, a small soft-voiced girl, Rhoda Tompkins, and Rose Weyland--a very golden-haired, dark-eyebrowed lady, who had been in some far back period, so f.a.n.n.y contrived to whisper, a flame of Brown's.

Of the men, Joan liked Mr. Strachan best; he was an ugly man with very pleasant eyes and a rare smile that lit up the whole of his face. He seemed quiet, she thought, and rather apart from the others.

The journey down to Tonbridge proved slightly disastrous. To begin with, thanks to Daddy Brown himself, the company missed the best train of the day and had to travel by one that meant two changes. On arrival at Tonbridge at four o'clock in the afternoon they found that one of the stage property boxes had gone astray. Considering that they were billed to appear that evening at eight and the next train did not arrive till ten-thirty, the prospect was not a promising one.

"Always merry and bright," as Jimmie, the stage prompter, remarked in an aside to Strachan. "By the way, is it the _Arcadians_ that we are doing to-night?"

"How the h.e.l.l can we do anything," growled Daddy Brown, the patch of skin round his danger-mark showed alarmingly red, "if that box does not appear. Who was the blasted idiot who was supposed to be looking after it?"

"Well, it was and it was not me, Sir," Jimmie acknowledged; "the truth is that I saw it labelled all right and left it with the rest of the luggage to look after itself. I suppose----"

"Oh, what is the use of talking," Brown broke in impatiently; he had thrust his hat back on his fiery head, the lines of fat above his collar shone with perspiration. "You had better go on, all of you, and see about getting rooms; the first rehearsal is in an hour, box or no box, and don't you forget it."

"I don't see," wailed Mrs. O'Malley, almost as soon as his back was turned, "how we are to live through this sort of thing. What is the use of a rehearsal if none of our things are going to turn up?"

"I guess there will be a performance whether or no," f.a.n.n.y told her.

"Come along, honey," this to Joan, "seize up your bag and follow me; we have got to find diggings of sorts before the hour is up."

Joan found, as they trudged from lodging-house to lodging-house, that the theatrical profession was apparently very unpopular in Tonbridge. As f.a.n.n.y remarked, it was always as well to tell the old ladies what to expect, but the very mention of the word theatre caused a chill to descend on the prospective landladies' faces. They found rooms finally in one of the smaller side streets; a fair-sized double bedroom, and a tiny little sitting-room. The house had the added advantage of being very near the theatre, which was just as well, for they had barely time to settle with the woman before they had to hurry off for the rehearsal.

"It won't do to be late," f.a.n.n.y confided to Joan. "Daddy is in an awful temper; we shan't get any champagne to-night unless some of us soothe him down."

At the small tin-roofed theatre supreme chaos reigned upon the stage and behind it. Daddy Brown, his hat thrown off, his coat discarded, stormed and raged at everyone within hearing. _The Country Girl_ had replaced _The Arcadians_ on the bill; it was an old favourite and less troublesome to stage. f.a.n.n.y was to play _Molly_; it was a part that she might have been born for. Daddy Brown won back to his good humour as he watched her; her voice, clear and sweet, carried with it a certain untouched charm of youth, for f.a.n.n.y put her whole heart into her work.

Joan felt herself infected by the other's spirit, she joined in the singing, laughing with real merriment at her chorus partner. The stage boards cracked and creaked, the man at the piano watched the performers with admiring eyes--the music was so familiar that it was quite unnecessary for him to follow the notes. Daddy Brown and the box office man, sole occupants of the stalls, saw fit to applaud as the chorus swung to a breathless pause.

"That's good, that's good," Brown shouted. "Just once more again please, ladies, then we'll call a rest. Don't want to tire you out before to-night."

The dance flourished to its second end and f.a.n.n.y flung herself exhausted against the wings. Her cough was troubling her again, shaking her thin body, fighting its way through her tightened throat.

"It's worth it though," she laughed in answer to Joan's remonstrance; "it is the only time I really live when I am dancing, you see."

The rehearsal dragged out its weary length, but not until Brown had reduced all the company to such a state of exhaustion that they could raise no quiver of protest to any of his orders. A man of iron himself, he extracted and expected from the people under him the same powers of endurance which he himself possessed. Since f.a.n.n.y and Joan could not go home to their lodgings, the time being too short, Strachan escorted them out to obtain a meal of sorts before the evening's performance. Short of Daddy Brown's hotel, which stood close to the theatre and which they were all reluctant to try, there did not appear to be any restaurants in the neighbourhood and they ended up by having a kind of high tea at a little baker's. "Eggs are splendid things to act on," Strachan told Joan.