The Diamond Waterfall (5 page)

“Yes, indeed, yes.” She caught his brother's eye. Sir Robert stared at her. To show she had meant nothing by her remarks, she smiled.

At that moment the Hungarian band launched into a selection from
Dorothy.
First a light, prancing number. Then a quieter, more romantic one. Sir Robert—she saw that he watched her still—said:

“You know it—what show this is from?”

“Yes, yes, I know it.” She thought again, He is a widower and that is pitiful.
“Dorothy.
Frank Cellier. Always popular. It wasn't new, even ten years ago.”

Pity. I don't care for pity. Once, it was nearly my undoing…. She felt that she could not bear it—this rush of memory, emotion.

Sir Robert was insisting, though, “This song—what is it called?”

“ ‘Queen of My Heart,' ” she said promptly. “It is called ‘Queen of My Heart.'”

I had to be hard in those days, she thought. Yet hearing the song now, she was reminded only of pity, and the irony of that pity. I concerned myself with the wrong person, she thought. A foolish heart (mine) betrayed me, blinding me to what I should have seen.

Two memories, the song brings back, one shameful, the other of a sadness I can hardly bear now to remember.

Escaped! That first terrifying, wonderful day, ten years ago now yet seeming so much more. I was both afraid and happy—afraid they would come after me, that Harry would be punished on my account; that worse might befall Daisy and I not there to help.

Sitting there in the London-bound train (I had thought it would never come into the station, that the whistle would
never
blow), I saw myself in a play, a melodrama perhaps—I felt I had Runaway Daughter written all over me.

At Kings Cross station it was raining, summer rain. I hailed a porter and then a cab, assuming a confidence I did not feel. (I knew nothing of London. Might not my pocket be picked, my person assaulted?) Deep in my hamper was the little notebook with its precious list of theatrical lodgings. I said miserably, throwing myself on the cab driver's mercy:

“If you know where I might lodge, where a young woman alone—”

“Does your mother know you're out?” He scratched his head, laughing at me. Catch phrase or not it was too near the truth. In those few seconds I saw myself returned to Leeds like a misrouted parcel. Then:

“Berridges,” he said. “Gray's Inn Road, just off. There in a jiffy, miss.”

Oh blessed relief. It was a good hotel, but more expensive than I had intended. And too, I did not feel completely safe—for I had signed the register with my new name. Proudly: Lily Greene. But now I thought, It is too like, if anyone is searching for a Greenwood, of a certain age and description.

Next morning I told an uninterested reception clerk that I had to catch the boat train (let them look for me in Calais, I thought. In
Paris!),
then took cab, and made for the first address I had. Theatrical lodgings, in Westminster.

When I was almost there (and how would my money do, if I must be always taking cabs?) I thought, perhaps they will ask me what play I am in, and I have no fiction ready. I turned the cab back, deciding to wait until I could speak to Miss Grey. (But would she find me work at once?) Fatigue, indecision. I changed the order, and then changed it back again. I had lost the cabby's goodwill. If I was traced, he would certainly remember me. By the time I reached the address, I could not decide whether I should ask him to wait. I could decide nothing.

I stood on the step with my hamper. A great battle-ax of a woman opened the door.

“Yes?”

“I want—you keep lodgings, theatrical lodgings?”

I thought she was going to hit me: her hand went up—but she used it only to swipe at a cat scuttling from under a bush toward the door.

“Not a room, no. You might get, perhaps,
half
a room.”

It had begun to rain, the same sad summer drizzle which had greeted me at Kings Cross.

“Well—yes or no? Yes or no?”

“Yes. I mean—”

“Come in then, if you're coming.” She led me into a parlor. I remember it as horrible, with a smell of cold cabbage seeming to come from the upholstery.

I agreed to everything. To paying at once, to sharing a room, to buying food for this evening, to waiting in this unpleasant parlor till she would agree to show me the room.

“Of course they're all out. They had rehearsals at ten. How is you're alone then?”

I had come, I said, to see a certain well-known actress, who would be arranging work for me.

Half an hour later she took me upstairs. The room was small and dark. In the double bed was a large hump. “Miss Malcolm!” She shook and prodded the hump. I stood in the doorway uncertainly, arm aching from bringing up my hamper. “You should be out. Wake up
at once!”

“Never,” said a muffled voice. “Nevermore. Nevermore.” The sheet covered her face.

“If you're sick—this is no infirmary, Miss Malcolm—” She pushed past me at the door. “Please yourself, Miss Malcolm, do. And you, Miss Greene, can wait till her ladyship decides she'll speak. It's her you've to sleep along of.”

As the landlady's footsteps died away, Miss Malcolm (how could I ever,
did
I ever think of her as “Miss Malcolm?”), stirred. She lifted a ravaged face from beneath the bedclothes. Her dark, waving hair had not been tied back; instead it stood out from her face, wildly.

“Dear Lord, I have lost it, you know. Gone, gone,
gone.
I am undone.”

It was a deep voice of great beauty even when, as now, she was overemphasizing. Dear Vicky—larger than life (too large for little life). She had sat up and was pulling her fingers through the tangled forest. “Oh dear God—I must take your name in vain. Gone, all lost.”

I said, and felt foolish, “Is something wrong?”

“But absolutely a
disaster,
I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. Now I sleep too heavily. I
lost
it.”

“Lost what?”

“It wasn't very large,” she said desperately, “it wasn't as if it were
important
—but I have lost it.” Just as I was about to ask further, she went on, “My part—the
little
part that I had—it is
gone.”

“You are unemployed—does it mean that?”

She said dramatically,
“Indeed
I have the frost.” She had climbed out of bed, pulled on a wrap. Suddenly, looking at me for the first time: “Tell me,” she said, “oh tell me—what are
you
in?”

“Nothing,” I said, “I am
in
nothing.” Enough, but I had had to spoil it
then with a little arrogant turn of phrase. “Miss Grey, Sylvia Grey. I have an introduction to her. I expect soon to be engaged.”

“No, but you are
very
fortunate.” She looked, it seemed to me, suitably impressed. “When do you take this up?”

I explained that I would go to the Lyceum today. She nodded, all the time moving about the room, which was in an incredible confusion. Clothes and underclothes on every chair. “I shall move all these for you,” she said. “And in any case I shall not be here long. I
cannot
be here long.”

Presently she went downstairs for hot water. She washed behind the flimsy Japanese screen, telling me all the while about everybody in the house. Then she attended to her hair, while I sat in the basket chair watching her. She had not asked me of my previous experiences. Overconfident, I would surely be found out soon.

Her mouth full of hairpins, she asked, “Why should we not go together, now, to the Lyceum?”

We took a cab. I clutched my note to Sylvia Grey. Oh, but I should have guessed, fool that I was, I had not looked in the newspapers, let alone the stage journals.

“Miss Grey?” said the man in the deserted foyer of the Lyceum. “She's on tour, miss.”

On tour. On tour. Where? (Please God not
Australia.)
I took the note and all my foolish hopes to Miss Malcolm, waiting in the cab.

“Well? You have left your letter?”

“She's not there. She is in
Scotland.”
And then it all came tumbling out. I said, “I have run away from home. Run away in the
wrong direction!”

I had not meant to tell anyone—or at least not so soon. But at once she was warmly sympathetic, giving directions to the cabby, then, clutching my arm: “Oh my dear,” she said, “we are both in
such
trouble.”

She paid the cab, pushing my money away. “There's a tea shop here. We must talk, at once. We are rowing the same boat, I think.”

Inside, she asked, “What are you—or rather what are
we
—going to do now?” Adding, “You might as well tell me
everything.”
As I did so, she said, nodding, “Yes. That's right. You did right. Especially everywhere to
add to your age.
It is wiser. And I had thought you twenty.”

“But your trouble,” I said, “you have told me nothing of your trouble.”

“Sacked. I lost my part yesterday
and
my place in the company. I answered back, you see. But it goes deeper than that. I tell you in confidence of course.” She said in a dramatic whisper, “Mr. Zulueta, the manager, wanted what I was not—what I
should
not—be prepared to give. I repulsed him. He has been waiting only for the moment to humiliate me.”

She told me something of herself. Her father was a man of the Church in
Scotland, in Linlithgow. She seemed more interested, though, in my tale than hers:

“To have been locked up.
Imprisoned,”
she said in wonder. “You see, I knew nothing like that.”

But of course our talk kept coming back to our plight, our joint plight. We discussed money:

“Have you some savings?” I asked her.

“For a week or two. And then I shall be in diffs.” She leaned forward.

“I know,” she said with sudden resolution. “We must find something
out
of London. Immediately.”

We took the night train to Scotland. Sylvia Grey was billed this week in Edinburgh, but I discovered all too soon that she was not there either. She had been taken ill in Liverpool.

It really looked like trouble. That afternoon we walked disconsolately, visiting all the theaters. And then …

A grubby building in the Old Town. Outside, a filthy and torn bill: “Jubilee Song and Dance.” We were trying to decipher the remainder when a man came out. He said, “Will ye buy your tickets now? We
shall
play tonight. Dinna fear.”

A devil got into me. “We don't watch shows,” I said haughtily.
“We
perform.”

“What has happened,” said the man, “it's this, see.” That very morning, it appeared, they had lost a couple of turns—one of which had been two sisters.

“Tell your manager,” Vicky said grandly, “that two first-class artistes are by chance free, up here on holiday.”

It was she who did all the talking. That afternoon we devised in the small front room of our lodgings a double act: the Carruthers Sisters.

We were a success in a small way. I never took up Sylvia Grey's offer. The last night in Edinburgh we were approached by a man who had a small touring company. We spent two years with him, working hard, but having fun. Vicky was the friend I needed. When I had lost Daisy, I had lost sister
and
friend.

So it was that although I was often homesick, it was never unbearable. I worried though for Daisy and Joszef. I wrote them, saying only, “I am
well and happy.”
I sent money and a small gift for Harry.

I became seasoned, gained experience, all the while preparing myself for the lucky chance that would surely come. In the meantime it was not a bad life—this small enclosed world, more hard work than glamour, with its private language, its unsociable hours. A life of traveling Sundays, up and down and across Britain. We acted, sang, danced. Everything we did was of the lightest weight—however heavy the humor. I did not mind that often the work was well below what I felt certain I could do. Did not the road lead
uphill all the way to Olympus? I was in no hurry. With greater beauty, I would perhaps have been sooner there. Vicky was beautiful—but had no ambition. When a chance came to her, she would forget to learn the lines: late for rehearsals regularly, she was as regularly fined. She seemed hardly to mind at all.

We giggled together backstage, flirting from time to time with good-looking or not-so-good-looking men in the company. Sometimes we were escorted out by some admirer in the current town. We went whenever we could in foursomes. Very innocent. Very happy.

In March of 1890 our manager told us he had secured the services of a great singer. He mentioned no name. Offstage, rumor proliferated. It was,
must
be, Hayden Coffin, Frank Leslie. When we at last heard, we did not know him at all. Frank Donovan?
Frank Donovan?

It appeared that Mr. Donovan had once understudied Hayden Coffin and had on two consecutive nights gone on for him. But since then, nothing. We learned soon that the money for him had come from the wife of our new romantic juvenile, Laurence Wheldon, a blond and willowy man whose good looks far exceeded his acting powers but whose wife's money was underwriting the company, to say nothing of her husband's ambitions. Laurence Wheldon. I did not care for him. I did not like the calculating way in which his cold blue eyes appraised each girl in the company.

Frank joined us together with his wife two weeks later. He would be playing only male leads: Mrs. Donovan made that clear. She did not play opposite him, but was second soubrette usually. I did not like her, nor did Vicky. Perhaps because Mrs. Donovan snipped at her:

“Miss Malcolm, I'm surprised that such a powerful voice, that we should not hear it out of the chorus.” Or: “Frank, Frank, do look! There is Miss Malcolm blown in late again. In
total
disarray.” And she would fall about laughing.