Pictures

Eight o’clock in the morning. Miss Ada Moss lay in a black iron

bedstead, staring up at the ceiling. Her room, a Bloomsbury top-floor

back, smelled of soot and face powder and the paper of fried potatoes

she brought in for supper the night before.

“Oh, dear,” thought Miss Moss, “I am cold. I wonder why it is that I

always wake up so cold in the mornings now. My knees and feet and my

back—especially my back; it’s like a sheet of ice. And I always was

such a one for being warm in the old days. It’s not as if I was

skinny—I’m just the same full figure that I used to be. No, it’s

because I don’t have a good hot dinner in the evenings.”

A pageant of Good Hot Dinners passed across the ceiling, each of them

accompanied by a bottle of Nourishing Stout. . . .

“Even if I were to get up now,” she thought, “and have a sensible

substantial breakfast . . .” A pageant of Sensible Substantial

Breakfasts followed the dinners across the ceiling, shepherded by an

enormous, white, uncut ham. Miss Moss shuddered and disappeared under

the bedclothes. Suddenly, in bounced the landlady.

“There’s a letter for you, Miss Moss.”

“Oh,” said Miss Moss, far too friendly, “thank you very much, Mrs.

Pine. It’s very good of you, I’m sure, to take the trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” said the landlady. “I thought perhaps it was the

letter you’d been expecting.”

“Why,” said Miss Moss brightly, “yes, perhaps it is.” She put her head

on one side and smiled vaguely at the letter. “I shouldn’t be

surprised.”

The landlady’s eyes popped. “Well, I should, Miss Moss,” said she, “and

that’s how it is. And I’ll trouble you to open it, if you please. Many

is the lady in my place as would have done it for you and have been

within her rights. For things can’t go on like this, Miss Moss, no

indeed they can’t. What with week in week out and first you’ve got it

and then you haven’t, and then it’s another letter lost in the post or

another manager down at Brighton but will be back on Tuesday for

certain—I’m fair sick and tired and I won’t stand it no more. Why

should I, Miss Moss, I ask you, at a time like this, with prices flying

up in the air and my poor dear lad in France? My sister Eliza was only

saying to me yesterday—‘Minnie,’ she says, ‘you’re too soft-hearted.

You could have let that room time and time again,’ says she, ‘and if

people won’t look after themselves in times like these, nobody else

will,’ she says. ‘She may have had a College eddication and sung in

West End concerts,’ says she, ‘but if your Lizzie says what’s true,’

she says, ‘and she’s washing her own wovens and drying them on the

towel rail, it’s easy to see where the finger’s pointing. And it’s high

time you had done with it,’ says she.”

Miss Moss gave no sign of having heard this. She sat up in bed, tore

open her letter and read:

“Dear Madam,

Yours to hand. Am not producing at present, but have filed photo

for future ref.

Yours truly,

BACKWASH FILM CO.”

This letter seemed to afford her peculiar satisfaction; she read it

through twice before replying to the landlady.

“Well, Mrs. Pine, I think you’ll be sorry for what you said. This is

from a manager, asking me to be there with evening dress at ten o’clock

next Saturday morning.”

But the landlady was too quick for her. She pounced, secured the

letter.

“Oh, is it! Is it indeed!” she cried.

“Give me back that letter. Give it back to me at once, you bad, wicked

woman,” cried Miss Moss, who could not get out of bed because her

nightdress was slit down the back. “Give me back my private letter.”

The landlady began slowly backing out of the room, holding the letter

to her buttoned bodice.

“So it’s come to this, has it?” said she. “Well, Miss Moss, if I don’t

get my rent at eight o’clock to-night, we’ll see who’s a bad, wicked

woman—that’s all.” Here she nodded, mysteriously. “And I’ll keep this

letter.” Here her voice rose. “It will be a pretty little bit of

evidence!” And here it fell, sepulchral, “_My lady._”

The door banged and Miss Moss was alone. She flung off the bed clothes,

and sitting by the side of the bed, furious and shivering, she stared

at her fat white legs with their great knots of greeny-blue veins.

“Cockroach! That’s what she is. She’s a cockroach!” said Miss Moss. “I

could have her up for snatching my letter—I’m sure I could.” Still

keeping on her nightdress she began to drag on her clothes.

“Oh, if I could only pay that woman, I’d give her a piece of my mind

that she wouldn’t forget. I’d tell her off proper.” She went over to

the chest of drawers for a safety-pin, and seeing herself in the glass

she gave a vague smile and shook her head. “Well, old girl,” she

murmured, “you’re up against it this time, and no mistake.” But the

person in the glass made an ugly face at her.

“You silly thing,” scolded Miss Moss. “Now what’s the good of crying:

you’ll only make your nose red. No, you get dressed and go out and try

your luck—that’s what you’ve got to do.”

She unhooked her vanity bag from the bedpost, rooted in it, shook it,

turned it inside out.

“I’ll have a nice cup of tea at an A B C to settle me before I go

anywhere,” she decided. “I’ve got one and thrippence—yes, just one and

three.”

Ten minutes later, a stout lady in blue serge, with a bunch of

artificial “parmas” at her bosom, a black hat covered with purple

pansies, white gloves, boots with white uppers, and a vanity bag

containing one and three, sang in a low contralto voice:

Sweet-heart, remember when days are forlorn

It al-ways is dar-kest before the dawn.

But the person in the glass made a face at her, and Miss Moss went out.

There were grey crabs all the way down the street slopping water over

grey stone steps. With his strange, hawking cry and the jangle of the

cans the milk boy went his rounds. Outside Brittweiler’s Swiss House he

made a splash, and an old brown cat without a tail appeared from

nowhere, and began greedily and silently drinking up the spill. It gave

Miss Moss a queer feeling to watch—a sinking—as you might say.

But when she came to the A B C she found the door propped open; a man

went in and out carrying trays of rolls, and there was nobody inside

except a waitress doing her hair and the cashier unlocking cash-boxes.

She stood in the middle of the floor but neither of them saw her.

“My boy came home last night,” sang the waitress.

“Oh, I say—how topping for you!” gurgled the cashier.

“Yes, wasn’t it,” sang the waitress. “He brought me a sweet little

brooch. Look, it’s got ‘Dieppe’ written on it.”

The cashier ran across to look and put her arm round the waitress’

neck.

“Oh, I say—how topping for you.”

“Yes, isn’t it,” said the waitress. “O-oh, he is brahn. ‘Hullo,’ I

said, ‘hullo, old mahogany.’”

“Oh, I say,” gurgled the cashier, running back into her cage and nearly

bumping into Miss Moss on the way. “You are a _treat!”_ Then the man

with the rolls came in again, swerving past her.

“Can I have a cup of tea, Miss?” she asked.

But the waitress went on doing her hair. “Oh,” she sang, “we’re not

_open_ yet.” She turned round and waved her comb at the cashier.

“_Are_ we, dear?”

“Oh, no,” said the cashier. Miss Moss went out.

“I’ll go to Charing Cross. Yes, that’s what I’ll do,” she decided. “But

I won’t have a cup of tea. No, I’ll have a coffee. There’s more of a

tonic in coffee. . . . Cheeky, those girls are! Her boy came home last

night; he brought her a brooch with ‘Dieppe’ written on it.” She began

to cross the road. . . .

“Look out, Fattie; don’t go to sleep!” yelled a taxi driver. She

pretended not to hear.

“No, I won’t go to Charing Cross,” she decided. “I’ll go straight to

Kig and Kadgit. They’re open at nine. If I get there early Mr. Kadgit

may have something by the morning’s post. . . . I’m very glad you

turned up so early, Miss Moss. I’ve just heard from a manager who wants

a lady to play. . . . I think you’ll just suit him. I’ll give you a

card to go and see him. It’s three pounds a week and all found. If I

were you I’d hop round as fast as I could. Lucky you turned up so early

. . .”

But there was nobody at Kig and Kadgit’s except the charwoman wiping

over the “lino” in the passage.

“Nobody here yet, Miss,” said the char.

“Oh, isn’t Mr. Kadgit here?” said Miss Moss, trying to dodge the pail

and brush. “Well, I’ll just wait a moment, if I may.”

“You can’t wait in the waiting-room, Miss. I ’aven’t done it yet. Mr.

Kadgit’s never ’ere before ’leven-thirty Saturdays. Sometimes ’e don’t

come at all.” And the char began crawling towards her.

“Dear me—how silly of me,” said Miss Moss. “I forgot it was Saturday.”

“Mind your feet, _please_, Miss,” said the char. And Miss Moss was

outside again.

That was one thing about Beit and Bithems; it was lively. You walked

into the waiting-room, into a great buzz of conversation, and there was

everybody; you knew almost everybody. The early ones sat on chairs and

the later ones sat on the early ones’ laps, while the gentlemen leaned

negligently against the walls or preened themselves in front of the

admiring ladies.

“Hello,” said Miss Moss, very gay. “Here we are again!”

And young Mr. Clayton, playing the banjo on his walking-stick, sang:

“Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.”

“Mr. Bithem here yet?” asked Miss Moss, taking out an old dead powder

puff and powdering her nose mauve.

“Oh, yes, dear,” cried the chorus. “He’s been here for ages. We’ve all

been waiting here for more than an hour.”

“Dear me!” said Miss Moss. “Anything doing, do you think?”

“Oh, a few jobs going for South Africa,” said young Mr. Clayton.

“Hundred and fifty a week for two years, you know.”

“Oh!” cried the chorus. “You _are_ weird, Mr. Clayton. Isn’t he a

_cure?_ Isn’t he a _scream_, dear? Oh, Mr. Clayton, you do make me

laugh. Isn’t he a _comic?_”

A dark, mournful girl touched Miss Moss on the arm.

“I just missed a lovely job yesterday,” she said. “Six weeks in the

provinces and then the West End. The manager said I would have got it

for certain if only I’d been robust enough. He said if my figure had

been fuller, the part was made for me.” She stared at Miss Moss, and

the dirty dark red rose under the brim of her hat looked, somehow, as

though it shared the blow with her, and was crushed, too.

“Oh, dear, that was hard lines,” said Miss Moss trying to appear

indifferent. “What was it—if I may ask?”

But the dark, mournful girl saw through her and a gleam of spite came

into her heavy eyes.

“Oh, no good to you, my dear,” said she. “He wanted someone young, you

know—a dark Spanish type—my style, but more figure, that was all.”

The inner door opened and Mr. Bithem appeared in his shirt sleeves. He

kept one hand on the door ready to whisk back again, and held up the

other.

“Look here, ladies——” and then he paused, grinned his famous grin

before he said—“_and bhoys._” The waiting-room laughed so loudly at

this that he had to hold both hands up. “It’s no good waiting this

morning. Come back Monday; I’m expecting several calls on Monday.”

Miss Moss made a desperate rush forward. “Mr. Bithem, I wonder if

you’ve heard from . . .”

“Now let me see,” said Mr. Bithem slowly, staring; he had only seen

Miss Moss four times a week for the past—how many weeks? “Now, who are

you?”

“Miss Ada Moss.”

“Oh, yes, yes; of course, my dear. Not yet, my dear. Now I had a call

for twenty-eight ladies to-day, but they had to be young and able to

hop it a bit—see? And I had another call for sixteen—but they had to

know something about sand-dancing. Look here, my dear, I’m up to the

eyebrows this morning. Come back on Monday week; it’s no good coming

before that.” He gave her a whole grin to herself and patted her fat

back. “Hearts of oak, dear lady,” said Mr. Bithem, “hearts of oak!”

At the North-East Film Company the crowd was all the way up the stairs.

Miss Moss found herself next to a fair little baby thing about thirty

in a white lace hat with cherries round it.

“What a crowd!” said she. “Anything special on?”

“_Didn’t_ you know, dear?” said the baby, opening her immense pale

eyes. “There was a call at nine-thirty for _attractive_ girls. We’ve

all been waiting for _hours._ Have you played for this company before?”

Miss Moss put her head on one side. “No, I don’t think I have.”

“They’re a lovely company to play for,” said the baby. “A friend of

mine has a friend who gets thirty pounds a day. . . . Have you _arcted_

much for the _fil_-lums?”

“Well, I’m not an actress by profession,” confessed Miss Moss. “I’m a

contralto singer. But things have been so bad lately that I’ve been

doing a little.”

“It’s _like_ that, isn’t it, dear?” said the baby.

“I had a splendid education at the College of Music,” said Miss Moss,

“and I got my silver medal for singing. I’ve often sung at West End

concerts. But I thought, for a change, I’d try my luck . . .”

“Yes, it’s _like_ that, isn’t it, dear?” said the baby.

At that moment a beautiful typist appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Are you all waiting for the North-East call?”

“Yes!” cried the chorus.

“Well, it’s off. I’ve just had a phone through.”

“But look here! What about our expenses?” shouted a voice.

The typist looked down at them, and she couldn’t help laughing.

“Oh, you weren’t to have been _paid._ The North-East never _pay_ their

crowds.”

There was only a little round window at the Bitter Orange Company. No

waiting-room—nobody at all except a girl, who came to the window when

Miss Moss knocked, and said: “Well?”

“Can I see the producer, please?” said Miss Moss pleasantly. The girl

leaned on the window-bar, half shut her eyes and seemed to go to sleep

for a moment. Miss Moss smiled at her. The girl not only frowned; she

seemed to smell something vaguely unpleasant; she sniffed. Suddenly she

moved away, came back with a paper and thrust it at Miss Moss.

“Fill up the form!” said she. And banged the window down.

“Can you aviate—high-dive—drive a car—buck-jump—shoot?” read Miss Moss.

She walked along the street asking herself those questions. There was a

high, cold wind blowing; it tugged at her, slapped her face, jeered; it

knew she could not answer them. In the Square Gardens she found a

little wire basket to drop the form into. And then she sat down on one

of the benches to powder her nose. But the person in the pocket mirror

made a hideous face at her, and that was too much for Miss Moss; she

had a good cry. It cheered her wonderfully.

“Well, that’s over,” she sighed. “It’s one comfort to be off my feet.

And my nose will soon get cool in the air. . . . It’s very nice in

here. Look at the sparrows. Cheep. Cheep. How close they come. I expect

somebody feeds them. No, I’ve nothing for you, you cheeky little

things. . . .” She looked away from them. What was the big building

opposite—the Café de Madrid? My goodness, what a smack that little

child came down! Poor little mite! Never mind—up again. . . . By eight

o’clock to-night . . . Café de Madrid. “I could just go in and sit

there and have a coffee, that’s all,” thought Miss Moss. “It’s such a

place for artists too. I might just have a stroke of luck. . . . A dark

handsome gentleman in a fur coat comes in with a friend, and sits at my

table, perhaps. ‘No, old chap, I’ve searched London for a contralto and

I can’t find a soul. You see, the music is difficult; have a look at

it.’” And Miss Moss heard herself saying: “Excuse me, I happen to be a

contralto, and I have sung that part many times. . . . Extraordinary!

‘Come back to my studio and I’ll try your voice now.’ . . . Ten pounds

a week. . . . Why should I feel nervous? It’s not nervousness. Why

shouldn’t I go to the Café de Madrid? I’m a respectable woman—I’m a

contralto singer. And I’m only trembling because I’ve had nothing to

eat to-day. . . . ‘A nice little piece of evidence, _my lady._’ . . .

Very well, Mrs. Pine. Café de Madrid. They have concerts there in the

evenings. . . . ‘Why don’t they begin?’ The contralto has not arrived.

. . . ‘Excuse me, I happen to be a contralto; I have sung that music

many times.’”

It was almost dark in the café. Men, palms, red plush seats, white

marble tables, waiters in aprons, Miss Moss walked through them all.

Hardly had she sat down when a very stout gentleman wearing a very

small hat that floated on the top of his head like a little yacht

flopped into the chair opposite hers.

“Good evening!” said he.

Miss Moss said, in her cheerful way: “Good evening!”

“Fine evening,” said the stout gentleman.

“Yes, very fine. Quite a treat, isn’t it?” said she.

He crooked a sausage finger at the waiter—“Bring me a large whisky”—and

turned to Miss Moss. “What’s yours?”

“Well, I think I’ll take a brandy if it’s all the same.”

Five minutes later the stout gentleman leaned across the table and blew

a puff of cigar smoke full in her face.

“That’s a tempting bit o’ ribbon!” said he.

Miss Moss blushed until a pulse at the top of her head that she never

had felt before pounded away.

“I always was one for pink,” said she.

The stout gentleman considered her, drumming with her fingers on the

table.

“I like ’em firm and well covered,” said he.

Miss Moss, to her surprise, gave a loud snigger.

Five minutes later the stout gentleman heaved himself up. “Well, am I

goin’ your way, or are you comin’ mine?” he asked.

“I’ll come with you, if it’s all the same,” said Miss Moss. And she

sailed after the little yacht out of the café.