Part 13 (1/2)
He rose with a clatter, threw his cigarette on the floor and stamped on it violently.
”He's a pretty bad wrong 'un,” said Paul. ”We hadn't been going a fortnight before he asked me to accept half salary, swearing he would make it up, with a rise, as soon as business got better. Like an idiot, I consented.”
His friend sat down again hopelessly. ”I don't know what's going to become of us. The missus has p.a.w.ned everything she has got, poor old girl! Oh, it's d.a.m.ned hard! We had been out six months.”
”Poor old chap!” said Paul, sitting on the bed beside his portmanteau.
”How does Mrs. Wilmer take it?”
”She's knocked endways. You see,” cried Wilmer desperately, ”we've had to send home everything we could sc.r.a.pe together to keep the kids--there's five of them; and now--and now there's nothing left. I'm wrong. There's that.” He fished three or four coppers from his pocket and held them out with a harsh laugh. ”There's that after twenty years'
work in this profession.”
”Poor old chap!” said Paul again. He liked Wilmer, a sober, earnest, ineffectual man, and his haggard, kindly-natured wife. They had put on a brave face all through the tour, letting no one suspect their straits, and doing both him and other members of the company many little acts of kindness and simple hospitality. In the lower submerged world of the theatrical profession in which Paul found himself he had met with many such instances of awful poverty. He had brushed elbows with Need himself. That morning he had given, out of his scanty resources, her railway fare to a tearful and despairing girl who played the low-comedy part. But he had not yet come across any position quite so untenable as that of Wilmer. Forty odd years old, a wife, five children, all his life given honestly to his calling--and threepence half-penny to his fortune.
”But, good G.o.d!” said he, after a pause, ”your kiddies? If you have nothing--what will happen to them?”
”Lord knows,” groaned Wilmer, staring in front of him, his elbows on the back of the chair and his head between his fists.
”And Mrs. Wilmer and yourself have got to get back to London.”
”I've got the dress suit I wear in the last act. It's fairly new. I can get enough on it.”
”But that's part of your outfit--your line of business; you'll want it again,” said Paul.
Wilmer had played butlers up and down the land for many years. Now and again, when the part did not need any special characterization, he obtained London engagements. He was one of the known stage butlers.
”I can hire if I'm pushed,” said he. ”It's h.e.l.l, isn't it? Something told me not to go out with a fit-up. We'd never come down to it before.
And I mistrusted Larkins--but we were out six months. Paul, my boy, chuck it. You're young; you're clever; you've had a swell education; you come of gentlefolk--my father kept a small hardware shop in Leicester--you have”--the smitten and generally inarticulate man hesitated--”well, you have extraordinary personal beauty; you have charm; you could do anything you like in the world, save act--and you can't act for toffee. Why the blazes do you stick to it?”
”I've got to earn my living just like you,” said Paul, greatly flattered by the artless tribute to his aristocratic personality and not offended by the professional censure which he knew to be just.
”I've tried all sorts of other things-music, painting, poetry, novel-writing--but none of them has come off.”
”Your people don't make you an allowance?”
”I've no people living,” said Paul, with a smile--and when Paul smiled it was as if Eros's feathers had brushed the cheek of a Praxitelean Hermes; and then with an outburst half sincere, half braggart--”I've been on my own ever since I was thirteen.”
Wilmer regarded him wearily. ”The missus and I have always thought you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”
”So I was,” Paul declared from his innermost conviction. ”But,” he laughed, ”I lost it before my teeth came and I could get a grip on it.”
”Do you mean to say,” exclaimed Wilmer, ”that you're not doing this for fun?”
”Fun?” cried Paul. ”Fun? Do you call this comic?” He waved his hand comprehensively, indicating the decayed pink-and-purple wall-paper, the ragged oil-cloth on the floor, the dingy window with its dingier outlook, the rickety deal wash-stand with the paint peeling off, a horrible clothless tray on a horrible splotchy chest of drawers, containing the horrible scraggy remains of a meal. ”Do you think I would have this if I could command silken sloth? I long like h.e.l.l, old chap, for silken sloth, and if I could get it, you wouldn't see me here.”
Wilmer rose and stretched out his hand. ”I'm sorry, dear boy,” said he.
”The wife and I thought it didn't very much matter to you. We always thought you were a kind of young swell doing it for amus.e.m.e.nt and experience--and because you never put on side, we liked you.”
Paul rose from the bed and put his hand on Wilmer's shoulder. ”And now you're disappointed?”
He laughed and his eyes twinkled humorously. His vagabond life had taught him some worldly wisdom. The sallow and ineffectual man looked confused. His misery was beyond the relief of smiles.