The Honey-Pot. Countess Barcynska

       Countess Barcynska

      The Honey-Pot

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066098254

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Titlepage

       Text

      "

      I

      In her petticoat, barefooted, because the morning was sultry, Miss Maggy Delamere plied a well-worn hare's foot to her cheeks with the sure touch of an artist. Professionally speaking and adding a final "e" to the term, that is what she was—chorus-lady by courtesy, showgirl in the vernacular of the stage. On her small dressing-table were ranged a number of pots and bottles, unguents and creams. A battered make-up box containing remnants and ends of variously colored grease sticks flanked a looking-glass of inadequate size and small reflective power. A beam of sunlight striking across a corner of the table danced with minute particles of dust from a powder-puff.

      The astonishing amount of vigor she put into the process of facial adornment, the prodigality with which she used pigments and washes, were characteristic of her temperament, all generosity and recklessness. Paint and powder were a habit with her, not an exigency. No girl of nineteen could have needed them less. Her complexion, well-nigh flawless, bloomed beneath the unnecessary veneer. Not even a cracked mirror could mitigate her good looks nor detract anything from her vivacious expression. It reflected a speaking face even when the lips were still.

      She was taking unusual pains with her appearance this morning. A card stuck in the edge of the looking-glass provided the reason.

      Memo. from A. Stannard, Dramatic Agent. PALL MALL THEATRE. Voice Trial, June 22nd, 10.45 a. m.

      As everybody knows, the Pall Mall is the one London Theater of all others to which ladies of the chorus most aspire. In Maggy's case that aspiration was intensified by real want of an engagement. She had recently succumbed to an attack of that childish complaint, measles, and was more than usually hard-up. Her choice of garments was as limited as her means, yet twice she changed her mind about one or another of them before she was satisfied that she looked her best. Her efforts to that end finished with the tacking of several sheets of tissue paper to the inside of her skirt to give it the rustle of a silk lining. The rustle—deceptive and effective as stage thunder—convincingly accomplished, she felt ready to present herself before any stage-manager in existence.

      If her mood was serene vanity had no part in it. Unlike the average chorus-girl she was quite free from conceit of any kind. She was too good-looking to be unaware of it, but she did not trade on her appearance further than professional principles strictly allowed. She asked no more of it than that it should bring her in from thirty shillings to two pounds a week for honest work behind the footlights. Commercialism with her ended there. She was all heart, but free from illusions. Her mother had been on the stage before her. Always on the stage herself since childhood, familiarized with its careless, hand-to-mouth existence, its trials and its exuberances, she had become worldly-wise at ten and a woman at fifteen. But the life did not demoralize her. The bad example of a mother's frailty and intemperance had been her safeguard. She had never lost her head or her heart. She did not rate herself very high, but she rated men lower. Apart from this she had no hidebound views about life or morality. Since her mother's unlovely death she had lived alone and kept her end up somehow. She had often been penniless, gone hungry and cold; but so did many of the people among whom she moved. So long as she was not quite penniless she never worried. Cigale-like she lived in the present. If she ever suffered from fits of depression it was when she realized that she was more than usually shabby and needy, a condition, however, which she preferred to put up with rather than descend to the acquisitive methods of other girls.

      Through the rattle of the traffic in the street below she heard a church clock booming. Incidentally, she regarded churches less as places of worship than timepieces of magnitude, convenient when you do not possess a watch. She counted the strokes, ten of them, darted to the glass for a last survey of herself, gave a touch to her hat, another to her waistbelt, and pattered in her now stockinged feet to the top of the stairs.

      "Shoes, please, Mrs. Bell!" she sang out. "You don't want me to be late, do you?"

      "Coming this moment, Miss Delamere!" shouted an answering voice.

      Mrs. Bell lumbered up the stairs with the shoes in her hand—high-heeled ones of the sort that only last a fortnight before losing shape.

      "I just stopped to give them an extry polish," she panted.

      Maggy took them from her and hurriedly put them on. While she buttoned them her landlady went on her knees and gave them a final rub up with her apron. She meant well.

      "You'll have luck to-day," she said, regaining her feet and surveying her lodger with approval. "I should look out for the butcher's black cat on my way, if I was you. Back to dinner, dear?"

      "I'll have a cut off whatever you've got, if I am," Maggy answered.

      "Mine's hot Canterbury lamb and onion sauce."

      "All right."

      Maggy ran downstairs, slammed the hall door behind her and walked down the street into the main thoroughfare, looking for the green motor-bus that would take her within a stone's throw of the Pall Mall Theater. In a quarter of an hour she had reached that imposing edifice. Going in at the stage door she descended a flight of stone steps, traversed a long passage, and found herself upon the stage.

      Gray daylight filtered down from the skylight above the flies, just enough for the business of the moment, no more. Across the unlit footlights was a gloomy void, pierced by an occasional gleam from an open door at the back of the pit or dress-circle, and relieved by the lighter hue of serried rows of dust-sheets hanging over the seats and balcony edges.

      Close to the footlights was a table occupied by the stage-manager and one of his satellites. In the corner to their left an upright piano was set askew with the conductor of the orchestra seated at it. At the back of the stage, standing about in groups, some thirty girls and a few men were waiting to have their voices tried.

      They chattered noisily. Most of them seemed to know one another. One or two called out a greeting to Maggy. Some were volubly discussing their professional experiences, telling of late engagements and prospective ones; the run of this piece, the closing down of that; incidents on tour and in pantomime; suppers at restaurants and the demerits of landladies. These topics ran into one another and overlapped. Others, with giggles, imparted risky anecdotes in undertones. Most of them appeared to be taking the situation with the calmness of habit. Nervousness showed in a few faces; anxiety in one or two. One pale-faced girl was in a condition of approaching maternity. In other surroundings she would have attracted attention, perhaps called up pathetic surprise that in the circumstances she should be attempting to obtain employment. But here very few were affected by pathos at sight of her, nor was she an object of much surprise.

      After Maggy had exchanged a word or two with those whom she knew she took very little notice of the people about her. She stood apart, humming a tune, and every now and again her feet broke into a subdued dance step. But this state of abstraction did not last long. That she was a creature of impulse showed in an abrupt change from it to close attention of what was going on around her. Her fine eyes went alertly over