Chapter 3 Shilling Points - Part Three

"Now I hope you will not be angry with me, but, you see, I know all about this sort of things, and you don't; but you won't mind my saying that as the leading man in a theater of this standing it is better for you not to take too much notice of the small part ladies. I'm sure you won't mind my saying this?"

"We are old friends," said Dacre sullenly, feeling for the first time that her smile was a trifle less fascinating than usual.

"Old friends! Oh, how nice! Of course that quite explains everything; but I'm sorry to tell you that your protegee won't do at all, and the management are going to get rid of her. She is really too stupid, and they can't do anything with her at all."

"Is this over now?" he asked. "Can we go home?"

"Yes. The next rehearsal is called for eleven o'clock tomorrow. Can I drop you?"

"No thanks. I'll take a hansom and go round to the club."

She shot a suspicious glance at him; but having no further excuse for delay, moved majestically away, and again, as once before, he hurried after the retreating girl's figure.

"Miss Grey," he said, "one moment. May I speak to you?"

Dimly he felt that this scene was but a replica of their last, as intangible, as unsatisfactory, as sad.

She turned a white, despairing face towards him. Her companions moved away and one more they were alone amid the moving scenery, the knocking of hammers, and the voices of stage carpenters.

"They have dismissed me," she said. Then with a burst of feeling which might have made her fortune were it only simulated before the footlights, and which was so real that it distorted her beautiful face for a moment: "I shall never be able to pay you now!" she said.

"Good heavens!" said Dacre. "I tell you I don't wish to be paid. I won't be paid, do you hear?"

A white flame of anger lit up her pale face and burned in her eyes.

"You shall be paid!" she said in between her teeth. "Do you think I've ever forgotten it for a moment -- that hateful game, my folly, and all you did for me? i think of it night and day, day and night, and I will pay you some day. You promised once that you would give ten years. Perhaps it may take as long as that, but it shall be done! Listen, I know I can act, but they won't believe in me because I am shy and stupid, and I can't seem to get on here. But someday I shall pay you with interest!"

Her face became illuminated; then she vanished in the shadow of the theater before Dacre had time to utter a word. It was only later that he realized the one thing he ought to have found out -- her address -- and one boon he should have craved --- permission to visit her -- had alike been forgotten by him.

"Then you have nothing for me?" said Dacre.

"I'm extremely sorry, my dear fellow," said the manager; "but the fact is, you don't draw any longer, and as for acting the part of it, why, if you'll excuse me saying so, that is a thing which you should not have taken up at all. I'm awfully sorry to say this, but truth is best."

"Of course," said Dacre, and a silence followed.

The play in which he acted with Mrs. Fanshawe had suddenly terminated; but even before the expiration of the run her exactions had begun to bore him. Then had a fight had followed and regretful words were said, and the relationship was over. Worse than over, for it left a rankling enmity, the effects of which Dacre was destined feel more and more, Mrs. Fanshawe being very powerful in the theatrical world.

He secured another engagement, but, no longer coached and helped by the accomplished actress, his technical powers dwindled away to nothing.

Still, his charming manners made him a general favorite, and at the close of the season he was engaged for a provincial tour. On returning to London again in the autumn, a new comedy was put up, in which there was no part for him, and, strangely enough, there seemed no part for him anywhere now.

He interviewed manager after manager, but they seemed to look coldly upon him., and a word always seemed to have been whispered beforehand to the effect that his services were useless; and meanwhile he had got out of touch with other chances of work, and had become bitten by that fatal passion for the stage which is quite independent of any real vocation for it. And now he had been the entire round of the London and provincial theaters, receiving at each the same courteous or gruff refusal as the case might be.

One only chance remained; and before availing himself of this, every other possible loophole of success had been tried and tried again.

It was no use; he must come to it. he must appear before the one being who had ever seriously stirred his imagination in the light of a fool, a blunderer, a failure, a ruined man.

Nothing is secret in the theatrical world, and Dacre was not unaware that as his star had sunk unkindly in a sea of mediocrity, so the star of the little insignificant super had risen, flashing meteor like over London. It had been the usual thing -- the sudden illness of a leading lady, the understudy coming forward at the last moment, unknown, unrecognized, uncared for, and then the sudden magnetism of a look, a voice, a personality, which had stirred the phlegmatic audience to an outburst of enthusiasm. A well written scene superbly acted, and the thing was done.

She awoke the next morning to find herself famous. Syndicates were got up to star her, and money flowed in like water. But the twenty pounds, the sole link between her and Dacre, were not returned, and it was the dread of forcing this fact upon her notice which had kept him away.

And now he was going to her, and having once made up his mind, a feeling of delight stole over him at the thought of looking upon her once more.

Trembling with eagerness, he sat down in his bare little room, and wrote her; and then he waited, the long, dreary, sickening, hopeless waiting of those who ask for work. The next morning at eleven he got a telegram: --

"Please call at the Crescent Theater at three. -- Lettice Grey."

Dismally Dacre looked through his small wardrobe. Would she recognize in this shabby fellow the superb young man who had perhaps pleased her girlish fancy five years ago?

Almost he determined to order a new suit of clothes and to postpone the interview, but then he resisted the temptation and went. She received him in a room set apart for interviews, and she was alone.

Her beauty gave Dacre almost a shock. She was in white, with a large black hat on, and as she stood by the window the sunlight turned her chestnut hair to gold, and flickered on the whiteness of her face and on the pearls around her neck.

"I am ashamed of coming to beg for favors," began Dacre miserably; but he got no further.

"Oh Lord James," she said, "how can you speak like that! If you knew how I have longed to find out your address! But you have not been acting lately under your own name, and I could not find it out."

"I have not," said Dacre, "been acting at all. I could not get any engagements. I have not come here to whine to you, Miss Grey. Times have been bad; but I am not a good actor, and no doubt I deserve it. I was fool enough to try to go in for this sort of work without any training or any special aptitude, and now no one will have me either here or elsewhere. But when I heard you were going into management, I felt it would not be so hard to ask a favor of you. Perhaps you would let me by your property man?"

During the whole of this speech she had kept her head bent; but when she turned her face towards him, he saw that she was in tears.

"You are destined to see me crying," she said, as she dashed them away, and looked smilingly into his anxious face; "but this time it is for joy. To think that I have a chance of helping you at last! I have exactly the part for you in my new play. You must study it at once."

"But should I be suitable?" hesitated Dacre. A sudden rush of new gladness was making his heart beat; her simple kindly joy and sympathy were irresistible.

"If it is not suitable for you, they shall write in a new part for you - or a new play if necessary. Don't state, Lord James; you have come along in the very nick of time. I think you underrate your merits; your remember I saw you play "Harold," and it was very good. I am in want of a leading man; come and try with me."

"What an angel you are," said Dace. "to have remembered like this!"

"There is something I have forgotten," she answered; "but I always hoped to give it to you myself, if the chance came. See here it is close at hand; I always keep it ready."

As she opened a little drawer in her writing table, and laid four crisp bank notes in Dacre's hand. He dropped them as if they had stung him.

"No, no, I will not take them! I will not!" he said.

Her eyes drew him into the sunlight beside her.

"Why not," she said, and she put out her hand and touched his.

That touch was like fire to gunpowder. How he did he could never afterwards tell; but as as he stood with her in the sunlight he stammered out the words he had so often said to himself:

"Oh, let think that once in all my life I had the power to give you something! There is no one like you to me; there never has been -- there never will be! I wanted to tell you so before, but you ran away from e; and now I must not, I dare not speak!"

She cam closer, and her eyes seemed to melt into his.

"But you have spoken," she said, "and I am so glad!"

"It was made of me to dare to say such words so soon; I but I mean them, every one! I love you Lettice Grey. I have loved you since I first saw you at the party so many years ago!"

"It is soon," she said; "but it is never too soon to be happy."

He voice faltered, and a look in her eyes seemed to ask him to take her into his arms.