“ Lord bless us!” exclaimed Mrs. Simpson. “I hope nothing ain’t happened to Miss Magdalen.”
“If anything has, you shall be held responsible for it. Where has she gone?”
“Oh, don’t go to tell me that my sweet Miss Magdalen has gone away again, sir!”
“You hear how they contradict one another, Herbert?”
Mrs Simpson looked mistrustfully at Jack, who was grinning at her with cynical admiration. “I don’t know what Mr. Jack may have put into your head about me, sir,” she said cautiously; “but I assure you I know nothing of poor Miss Magdalen’s doings. I haven’t seen her this past month.”
“You understand, of course,” remarked Jack, “that that is not true. Mrs. Simpson has always been present at your daughter’s lessons. She knows perfectly well that Miss Brailsford has gone to play at some theatre. She heard it in—”
“I wish you’d mind your own business, Mr Jack.” said the landlady, sharply.
“When lies are needed to serve Miss Brailsford, you can speak,” retorted Jack. “Until then, hold your tongue. It is clear to me, Mr Herbert, that you want this unfortunate young lady’s address for the purpose of attempting to drag her back from an honorable profession to a foolish and useless existence which she hates. Therefore I shall give you no information. If she is unhappy or unsuccessful in her new career, she will return of her own accord.”
“I fear,” said Herbert, embarrassed by the presence of Mrs Simpson, “that we can do no good by remaining here.”
“You arc right,” said Mr Brailsford. “I decline to address myself further to either of you. Other steps shall be taken. And you shall repent the part you have played on this occasion, Mrs. Simpson. As for you, sir, I can only say 1 trust this will prove our last meeting.”
“I shan’t repent nothink,” said Mrs. Simpson. “Why shouldn’t I assist the pretty—”
“Come!” said Jack, interrupting her, “we have said enough. Good evening, Mr Herbert.” Adrian colored, and moved towards the door, “You shall be welcome whenever you wish to see me,” added lack; “but at present you had better take this gentleman away.” Herbert bowed slightly, and went out, annoyed by the abrupt dismissal, and even more by the attempt to soften it. Mr Brailsford walked stiffly after him, staring indignantly at Mrs Simpson and her lodger. Provoked to mirth by this demonstration, Jack, who had hitherto behaved with dignity, rubbed his nose with the palm of his hand, and grinned hideously through his fingers at his visitor.
“As I told you before,” said Mr. Brailsford, turning as he reached the threshold, “you are a vile kidnapper; and I will see that your trade is exposed and put a stop to.”
“As I told you before,” said Jack, removing his hand from his nose, “you are an old fool; and I wish you good afternoon.”
“Sh — sh,” said Mrs Simpson, as Mr Brailsford, with a menacing wave of his glove, disappeared. “You didn’t ought to speak like that to an old gentleman, Mr. Jack.”
“His age gives him no right to be ill-tempered and abusive to me,” said Jack angrily.
“Humph!” retorted the landlady. “Your own tongue and temper are none of the sweetest. If I was you, I wouldn’t be so much took aback at seeing others do the same as myself.”
“Indeed. And how do you think being me would feel like, Mrs. Deceit?”
“I wouldn’t make out other people to be liars before their faces, at all events, Mr Jack.”
“You would prefer the truth to be told of you behind your back, perhaps. I sometimes wonder what part of my music will show the influence of your society upon me. My Giulietta Guicciardi!”
“Give me no more of your names,” said Mrs. Simpson, shortly, “I don’t need them.”
Jack left the room slowly as if he had forgotten her. Meanwhile Mr. Brailsford was denouncing him to Herbert. “From the moment I first saw him,” he said, “I felt an instinctive antipathy to him. I have never seen a worse face, or met with a worse nature.”
“I certainly do not like him,” said Herbert. “He has taken up an art as a trade, and knows nothing of the trials of a true artist’s career. No doubts of himself; no aspirations to suggest them; nothing but a stubborn narrow self-sufficiency. I half envy him.”
“The puppy!” exclaimed Mr Brailsford, not attending to Adrian: “to dare insult me! He shall suffer for it. I have put a bullet into a fellow — into a gentleman of good position — for less. And Magdalen — my daughter — is intimate with him — has visited him. Girls are going to the devil of late years, Herbert, going to the very devil. She shall not give me the slip again, when I catch her.”
Mr Brailsford, however, did not catch Magdalen. Her clear delivery of the doggerel allotted to her in the pantomime, gained the favor of the Nottingham playgoers. Their applause prevented her from growing weary of repeating her worthless part nightly for six weeks, and compensated her for the discomfort and humiliation of living among people whom she could not help regarding as her inferiors, and with whom she had to co-operate in entertaining vulgar people with vulgar pleasantries, fascinating them by a display of comeliness, not only of her face, hut of more of her person than she had been expected I to shew at Kensington Palace Gardens. Her costume shocked her at first; but she made up her mind to accept it without demur, partly because wearing such things was plainly part of an actress’s business and partly because she felt that any objection on her part would imply an immodest self-consciousness. Besides, she had no moral conviction that it was wrong, whereas she had no doubt at all that petticoats were a nuisance. She could not bring herself to accept with equal frankness the society which the pantomime company offered to her. Miss Lafitte, the chief performer, was a favorite with the public on account of her vivacity, her skill in clog-dancing, and her command of slang, which she uttered in a piercing voice with a racy Whitechapel accent. She took a fancy to Magdalen, who at first recoiled. But Miss Lafitte (in real life Mrs. Cohen) was so accustomed to live down aversion, that she only regarded it as a sort of shyness — as indeed it was. She was vigorous, loud spoken, always full of animal spirits, and too well appreciated by her audiences to be jealous. Magdalen, who had been made miserable at first by the special favor of permission to share the best dressing-room with her, soon found the advantage of having a goodnatured and powerful companion. The drunken old woman who was attached to the theatre as dresser, needed to be kept efficient by sharp abuse and systematic bullying, neither of which Magdalen could have administered effectually. Miss Lafitte bullied her to perfection. Occasionally some of the actors would stroll into the dressing room, evidently without the least suspicion that Magdalen might prefer to put on her shoes, rouge herself, and dress her hair in private. Miss Lafitte, who had never objected to their presence on her own account, now bade them begone whenever they appeared, at which they seemed astonished, but having no intention of being intrusive, retired submissively.
“You make yourself easy, deah,” she said to Magdalen. “Awe-y-’ll take kee-yerr of you. Lor’ bless you, awe-y know wot you are. You’re a law’ydy. But you’ll get used to them. They don’t mean no ‘arm.
Magdalen, wondering what Jack would have said to Miss Lafitte’s vowels, disclaimed all pretension to be more of a lady than those with whom she worked; but Miss Lafitte, though, she patted the young novice on the back, and soothingly assented, nevertheless continued to make a difference between her own behavior in Magdalen’s presence, and the coarse chaff and reckless flirtation in which she indulged freely elsewhere. On Boxing night, when Madge was nerving herself to face the riotous audience, Miss Lafittc told her that she looked beautiful; exhorted her cheerfully to keep up her pecker and never say die; and, ridiculing her fear of putting too much paint on her face, plastered her cheeks and blackened the margins of her eyes until she blushed