"Am I keeping you awake?"
"No. I sighed because you're so different to me. I couldn't wash to-night. And I knew my hair'd be a mat in the morning and the pillow pink from my cheeks."
"I wish you didn't paint. There's no harm in girls doing it if they need it, but you spoil yourself."
"Force of habit. Mother made up my face from the time I was ten."
Alexandra in her nightdress knelt down at the side of her bed. Maggy never said prayers. To see Alexandra say them, she said, was the nearest she would ever get to such things. She had never been taught to pray when a child.
"Might as well drop Him a hint that we're at the end of our tether," she suggested presently.
When Alexandra rose from her knees Maggy was sitting up in bed watching her, her hands clasping her legs.
"And you mean to say that you believe somebody hears you!" she said wonderingly.
"Yes."
"And does what you ask?"
"Yes—in the end."
"Then He must be pretty deaf.... You look nice saying your prayers. If I were God I couldn't refuse you anything. P'raps He's a woman-hater. Women get the worst of it everywhere, I think. If we do wrong, we have to pay for it. If we don't do wrong, we have to pay just the same. We're made so that we're not fit to be working all the time. Oh, it's a hell of a world for women! I can stand anything when I feel it's fair and just. I can't see any justice where we're concerned. They have an inspector Johnnie to see that the scales in the grocery-shops are fair, but if a woman wants to make a bargain she's got to do it on the heavy side."
"The law courts are the scales."
"The law? Aren't the scales against us there too? If we want a divorce we've got to be knocked about as well as—other things. If we're deserted and ruined before we're married we can get so many shillings a week until the kid's in his teens. And if there's no kid or it dies, well, p'raps your God'll help us, but the law won't. It's all too hard to fight against, and one can't make head or tail of it. Look at the White Slave Traffic. They'll flog a man if they catch him at it, but they won't flog De Freyne and give him hard labor for the dirty work he's doing every day of his life, though everybody knows about it. Why, he's only a—what's it called?—procurer for the nobility and gentry and all the rich bounders. And we're not all in yet, but we shall be. My word, one hears a lot about the chorus-girl being on the make-haste and living you-know-how. One doesn't hear how she's driven into it, like cattle into a dirty pen. I'm done, Lexie. I shan't hold out long."
Alexandra blew out the remaining candle. In the darkness one could just make out the two narrow beds and the glimmer of the window.
"You mustn't give in, Maggy," came Alexandra's voice after a pause. "When one meets the man one cares about one doesn't want to come to him with nothing to give."
"Why not? There isn't a man in a hundred who comes to a woman with a clean slate. Why should they expect us to have nothing written on ours?"
"Because when a man marries nature makes him want a pure woman, not for his own sake but because of the children she will probably have. For myself, I know I would rather show a clean slate to the man I loved and who loved me in a decent way whatever his life had been, than let a man who was nothing to me write his name there first. That must be wrong because it's against nature."
"Is it? I don't know. You can argue better than I can. You don't lose your temper. Let's bring it down to ourselves and our difficulties. The stage is a honey-pot and we girls are the honey in it, and the men are the flies buzzing round. They won't leave us alone. They make it almost impossible for us to live a decent life. And if it's decent it isn't beautiful. You can't call it beautiful, Lexie. This room's the limit. Think of the food we eat. Generally beastly. And our clothes. Everything's ugly and makeshift, and yet we've only got to stretch out our little fingers—"
"More than our little fingers."
"Well, if you like. Anyway, what are we waiting for? There's no sense in it. It won't get us any forrader. Why don't you leave me alone? I'd almost made up my mind to give in when I met you. I should rather enjoy cutting a dash and having everything I want and going one better than the other girls who crow over us, and snapping my fingers at the management like Mortimer did to-day. If a man was going to marry me and give me a nice broad ring and a little home there'd be some reason for going on like this and keeping good; but men don't ask chorus-girls to marry them, as a rule—not by a long chalk! Oh, goodnight!"
She twisted on to her side, and the bedsprings groaned.
From neighboring churches clocks began striking twelve. The noises from the street subsided. Only an occasional footfall was heard or a cart rumbling past. Sometimes a shrill voice broke the stillness, sometimes a drunken song.
The girls slept.
At dawn a cool breeze moved the dingy window curtain. Maggy woke and peered through the gray light at Alexandra, sleeping.
She looked as though she were dead and at peace.
Maggy wondered if that was the better fate.
VI
De Freyne did not seem to notice the efforts of the two girls in obeying his instructions to smarten up their appearance: he said nothing. But for all that, the change did not escape him. Maggy, in the draped cashmere affair struck him as likely to appeal to a Jew or a gentleman from Manchester. He had a particular individual of each type in his mind, and awaited a propitious moment for exploiting her to one or the other. For the next few days the attention of the girls would have to be devoted to rehearsals, not men.
De Freyne's exploitation of his chorus naturally had it roots in commercialism and self-interest. The girls themselves very seldom thanked him for his introductions. They were astute enough to understand that the advantage was at least mutual. Not that De Freyne expected any thanks. It was a trite observation of his that theatrical people were the most ungrateful lot in the world. He himself was a shining illustration of the dictum, but that did not lessen its truth. He got his "turn" from his wealthy stage-door dilettanti. It might be a social one in the shape of admittance to elevated circles; a select club, a shooting party, a cruise on a big yacht. Sometimes it was an invitation by a young and indiscreet member of the peerage to his country house and a photograph in the illustrated papers to proclaim it. De Freyne was very partial to reading beneath the group: "From left to right: The Marquis of Perth, Lady Angela Coniston, Sir Francis Manningtree, Mr. De Freyne...." This was prestige dear to his heart. He toed the line successfully between Society and Bohemianism. Most of the rich rascals and all the rich fools of the world were at his service.
But what gave him most satisfaction was to be able to put an important City man under an obligation. It often resulted in special information concerning stocks and shares that brought him large profits. He would have sacrificed any girl's reputation for a one-fourth per cent. turn of the market, and frequently did so.
In this regard he mentally pigeon-holed Maggy. It would not be difficult to find her a partner in the dance to which he should set the Mephistophelean measure. Alexandra he looked at with a cold eye. He wasn't sure of her. He had nothing to say against her looks, but he had no use for prudish high-steppers. Quick of apprehension where girls were concerned, he put her down in that category. The chorus would bear thinning out a bit. As a matter of policy, De Freyne always engaged more girls than he wanted.
For another week rehearsals went on, growing more frequent and longer. The clever stage-manager goes nearer creating silk purses out of sows' ears than any human being. No one in the early days of rehearsal would associate the pouting, obtuse, wooden young woman with the airy fairy sylphs who ravish the eye on a first night; yet they are one and the same, trained by methods similar to those used in schooling performing animals, by coaxing, bullying and inexhaustible patience.
When