Anonymous - The Romances Of Blanche La Mare

“First of all,” said Madame, “let me introduce you to Miss Blanche La Mare, a protegee of mine, who wants to go on the stage.”

Mr. Annesley squeezed my hand most affectionately, and then answered. “That is at once a very easy and a very difficult job, as doubtless you know, Madame Karl. Miss La Mare is very pretty and I am sure very clever but unfortunately that is not all that managers want. Has she seen anyone yet?”

I hesitated to speak of Lewis, but Madame took up the tale for me, and moreover told it with some circumstance and just a little exageration. The young man did not seem surprised, but he did not on the other hand seem very confident that I should find the agents much more demurely behaved.

It was suggested that we should lunch first; then I might make my visit to an agent Mr. Annesley knew. The fat little man, Walker Bird, was awakened to make our party a square one, and we hansomed off to a place called Estlakes.

I had Walker Bird for my cab companion. I think the other man would have very much liked to have leered after me, but Madame captured him at once and he had no choice but go gently.

I expected the fat little man to improve the occasion, and he certainly did not disappoint me. The street was too open and the luncheon place so crowded that kissing was out of the question, but he made no bones about squeezing my hand affectionately.

I was glad when Mr. Annesley said after lunch that I should come at once with him to see an agent.

Mr. Rufus, the agent, inhabited the first and second floors of a house in the Strand. The doors on either side of his offices opened into bars, and about them were grouped numbers of shabby men whom no one would have any difficulty in recognizing as actors. They all wore long coats, in some cases decorated about the collar and cuffs with fur of a very dubious origin, but in most cases extremely thin and bare. Within the bars I could see a number of ladies, whose costumes seemed to have been designed by an enthusiast of the kaleidoscope, and whose hats rivalled in their plumed splendor the paradise birds of the tropical regions. Their talk was loud and shrill, and could easily be heard in the street without.

“Chorus girls,” said Mr. Annesley, laconically, “they get thirty-five a week, and are expected to fill one of two stalls every evening, if they don't they get the sack, so you see they have in duty bound to get to know a lot of Johnnies.”

“Now then, Evans,' he said, to the young man in the outer office, “I've brought a young lady who has to see Mr. Rufus at once-at once, do you understand? Cut along in and tell him.”

In a few minutes the clerk returned with the message that Mr. Rufus would see us directly. Presently a door swung open, and the excellent Mr. Rufus appeared in person. For a moment, I thought that the poor man would be torn to pieces, for the attendant nymphs gathering up their skirts with one simultaneous and mighty rustle, like all the brown paper in the world being rolled up into a ball, bore down upon the devoted agent and besieged him with shrilly phrased interrogations.

As soon as we went to his room, he cordially welcomed Mr. Annesley, but of me he took not the slightest notice; he did not even ask me to sit down, though he had comfortably buried himself in a large and well padded armchair. Mr. Annesley began to explain the purport of our visit. It was barely finished, when Mr. Rufus condescended to turn to me.

“Well, my dear,” he said, “Mr. Annesley speaks very highly of you, and your appearance is decidedly in your favor. You can read music at sight, I suppose?”

I nodded.

“And sing?”

I nodded again.

“Well,” he continued, “you've just looked in at an opportune time. I've got to fill the chorus of a company that's just going out, and if you care to have the job, you can. Thirty shilling a week you begin on, but a girl like you ought not to stop long at that. Now, I shall expect you here at 11:30 on Monday to meet Mr. Restall, the manager. Good-bye, Miss La Mar, you'd better get out this way, and if you like, when you come again, you can come up this back staircase; ring the bell at the bottom, and you'll be let in. Mind you, this is a special favor.”

I accepted the offer of the engagement; as a matter of fact, I had come prepared to accept anything, and left Mr. Rufus by his private staircase. And so, in this way, I put my foot on the first rung of the dramatic ladder.

Annesley met me again outside, and asked me to have a drink with him. I wasn't very anxious to go into a public bar, but from what I saw of the ladies who were to be my theatrical companions, I gathered that it was a pretty usual thing to do. What would my reverend father, I wondered, have thought of his little daughter, had he watched her through the threshold of that glittering rendezvous.

We went into a small compartment, which we had to ourselves-in fact there was little room for anyone else there-and after a minute or two Mr. Annesley remembered with a start that he had left his notebook in the agent's office. “God forbid that anyone look into it,” he exclaimed, and then begged me to wait while he went back to Rufus'.

I could scarcely refuse, so sat perched on my high stool, sipping my whiskey and soda, and watching as well as I could the flirtations of the pretty barmaids and the customers in the other little boxes. Suddenly I became aware of a low toned conversation in the next compartment to mine, and by reason of a crack in the dividing wall. I could hardly help hearing it.

The man talking were obviously actors, and their conversation dealt with the theatrical tours they had just returned from. I give it just as it came from their lips, bad language and all. It was a revelation to me; I had not supposed before that any class of men could be so utterly mean in giving away the secrets of favors received from the other sex.

Said actor No. 1: “How did you get on with the girls in your show? Had a pretty warm time, I suppose?”

“My word, they were warm ones,” was the answer. “I started out meaning to live alone, but before two weeks, I had keeping house for me little Dolly Tesser.”

“I know her-pretty girl.”

“You're right; and you should see her with her clothes off, old man! A perfect peach, I can assure you. She was a bit shy at first, but I soon taught her all the tricks. My word, she is a bloody fine fuck!”

“Young, isn't she?”

“Oh, quite a kid, about seventeen-over the legal age though-you don't catch me making any mistake of that sort again. She wasn't a virgin, she'd been wrong with a conductor in the Gay Coquette crowd.”

“What, that syphilitic beast?”

“He hasn't got it really, but talking syph, have you heard the tale of Humphreys and his landlady's daughter?”

“No.”

“Well, he struck a place with an uncommonly pretty girl to wait. She was the landlady's daughter, and he hadn't been in the room three days before he was into her. Then on the fourth day, she didn't show up. He asked the old woman what was the matter.”

“Oh, Mary's very bad,” she said, “we've had to send her to the doctor, he says she's got syphilis.”

“You can bet old Humphreys nipped round to the chemist pretty sharp, bout a bottle of black wash and kept bathing the old man all day. On the next day however, the old girl turns to him as she's taking away his breakfast and says: “Oh, I made a mistake-n what I told you about Mary yesterday, it is erysipelas.”

At that moment Annesley returned, so I was spared any more from the actors on the other side of the bar.

Annesley wanted me to go back to the office with him, but I was too excited at the prospect of my engagement and I wanted to hurry home to tell Madame Karl-but I did not get back.