III
"Would you care to go behind and be introduced to Miss Fiddle?" Ozziesuggested at the interval after the curtain had been raised seventeentimes in response to frantic shoutings, cheerings, thumpings andclappings, and the mighty tumult of exhilaration had subsided into ahappy buzz that arose from all the seats in the entire orange-tintedbrilliant auditorium. The ladies would not go; the ladies feared, theysaid, to impose their company upon Miss Fiddle in the tremendous strainof her activities. They spoke primly and decisively. It was true thatthey feared; but their fear was based on consideration for themselvesrather than on consideration for Miss Fiddle. Ozzie was plainly snubbed.He had offered a wonderful privilege, and it had been disdained.
Mr. Prohack could not bear the spectacle of Ozzie's discomfiture. Hissad weakness for pleasing people overcame him, and, putting his handbenevolently on the young man's shoulder, he said:
"My dear fellow, personally I'm dying to go."
They went by strangely narrow corridors and through iron doors acrossthe stage, whose shirt-sleeved, ragged population seemed to be behavingas though the last trump had sounded, and so upstairs and along a broadpassage full of doors ajar from which issued whispers and exclamationsand transient visions of young women. From the star's dressing-room, atthe end, a crowd of all sorts and conditions of persons was beingpushed. Mr. Prohack trembled with an awful apprehension, and askedhimself vainly what in the name of commonsense he was doing there, andprayed that Ozzie might be refused admission. The next moment he wasbeing introduced to a middle-aged woman in a middle-aged dressing-gown.Her face was thickly caked with paint and powder, her eyes surroundedwith rings of deepest black, her finger-nails red. Mr. Prohack, notwithout difficulty, recognised Eliza. A dresser stood on either side ofher. Blinding showers of electric light poured down upon her defencelessbut hardy form. She shook hands, but Mr. Prohack deemed that she oughtto bear a notice: "Danger. Visitors are requested not to touch."
"So good of you to come round," she said, in her rich and powerfulvoice, smiling with all her superb teeth. Mr. Prohack, entranced, gazed,not as at a woman, but as at a public monument. Nevertheless he thoughtthat she was not a bad kind, and well suited for the rough work of theworld.
"I hope you're all coming to my ball to-night," said she. Mr. Prohackhad never heard of any ball. In an instant she told him that she hadremarked two most charming ladies with him in the box--(inordinatefaculty of observation, mused Mr. Prohack)--and in another instant shewas selling him three two guinea tickets for a grand ball and rout inaid of the West End Chorus Girls' Aid Association. Could he refuse,perceiving so clearly as he did that within the public monument washiding a wistful creature, human like himself, human like his wife anddaughter? He could not.
"Now you'll _come_?" said she.
Mr. Prohack swore that he would come, his heart sinking as he realisedthe consequence of his own foolish weakness. There was a knock at thedoor.
"Did you want me, Liza?" said a voice, and a fat gentleman, clothed withresplendent correctness, stepped into the room. It was thestage-manager, a god in his way.
Eliza Fiddle became a cyclone.
"I should think I did want you," she said passionately. "That's why Isent for you, and next time I'll ask you to come quicker. I'm not goingto have that squint-eyed girl on the stage any more to-night. You know,the one at the end of the row. Twice she spoiled my exit by getting inthe way. And you've got to throw her out, and take it from me. She doesit on purpose."
"I can't throw her out without Mr. Chown's orders, and Mr. Chown's inParis."
"Then you refuse?"
A pause.
"Yes."
"Then I'm not going on again to-night, not if I know it. I'm not goingto be insulted in my own theatre."
"It's not the girl's fault. You know they haven't got room to move."
"I don't know anything about that and I don't care. All I know is thatI've finished with that squint-eyed woman, and you can choose right nowbetween her and me. And so that's that."
Miss Fiddle's fragile complexion had approached to within six inches ofthe stage-manager's broad and shiny features, and it had littleresemblance to any of the various faces which audiences associated withthe figure of Eliza Fiddle; it was a face voluptuously distorted by theviolence of emotion. As Miss Fiddle appeared to be under the impressionthat she was alone with the stage-manager, Mr. Prohack rendered justiceto that impression by softly departing. Ozzie followed. Thestage-manager also followed. "Where are you going?" they heard Eliza'svoice behind them addressing the stage-manager.
"I'm going to tell your under-study to get ready quick."
An enormous altercation uprose, and faces peeped from every door in thecorridor; but Mr. Prohack stayed not. Ozzie led him to Mr. AspreyChown's private room. The Terror of the departments was shaken. Ozzielaughed gently as he shut the door.
"What will happen?" asked Mr. Prohack, affecting a gaiety he did notfeel.
"What do you think will happen?" simpered Ozzie blandly, "having dueregard to the fact that Miss Fiddle has to choose between three hundredand fifty pounds a week and a law-suit with Chown involving heavydamages? I must say there's nobody like Blaggs for keeping these threehundred and fifty pound a week individuals in order. Chown would soonerlose forty of them than lose Blaggs. And Eliza knows it. By the way,what do you think of the show?"
"Will it succeed?"
"You should see the advance booking. There's a thousand pounds in thehouse to-night. Chown will be clearing fifteen hundred a week when he'spaid off his production."
"Well, it's marvellous."
"You don't mean the show?"
"No. The profit."
"I agree," simpered Ozzie.
"I'm beginning to like this sizzling idiot," thought Mr. Prohack, as itwere regretfully. They left the imperial richness of Mr. Chown's privateroom like brothers.