London was a city of darkness and gloom, a veritable "city of dreadful night."

The fog was everywhere, it was bitter cold, and all the lights in the shops and the lamps in the streets were lit. As yet the fog was some few yards above the house-tops. It had not descended, as it did later on in the day, into the actual streets themselves. It lay, a terrible leaden pall, a little above them.

In no part of London did the fog seem more dreary than in Bloomsbury.

The gaunt squares, the wide, old-fashioned streets, were like gashes cut into a face of despair.

At half-past nine o"clock Mary Marriott came out of her tiny bedroom into her tiny sitting-room and lit the gas. She lived on the topmost floor of a great Georgian house in a narrow street just off Bedford Square. In the old days, before there were fogs, and when trees were still green in the heart of London, a great man had lived in this house.

The neighbourhood was fashionable then, and all the world had not moved westwards. The staircase at No. 102 was guarded by carved bal.u.s.ters, the ceilings of the lower rooms were worked in the ornate plaster of Adams, the doors were high, and the lintels delicately fluted. Now 102 was let out in lodgings, some furnished, some unfurnished. Mary Marriott had two tiny rooms under the roof. On the little landing outside was a small gas-stove and some shelves, upon which were a few pots and pans. A curtain screened this off from the stairhead. This was the kitchen. The furniture, what there was of it, was Mary"s own, and, in short, she might, had she been so disposed, have called her dwelling almost a flat.

Moreover, she paid her rent quarterly--five pounds every three months--and was quite an independent householder.

Mary was an actress, a hard-working member of the rank and file. She had never yet secured even the smallest engagement in London, and most of her life was spent on tour in the provinces. When she was away she locked up her rooms.

She was without any relations, except a sister, who was married to a curate in Birmingham. Her private income was exactly thirty pounds a year, the interest upon a thousand pounds safely invested. This paid the rent of the rooms which were all she had to call "home," and left her ten pounds over. Every penny in addition to this she must earn by the exercise of her art.

She had been lucky during her four years of stage life in rarely being out of an engagement. She had never played a leading part, even in the provinces, but her second parts had generally been good. If she had come nowhere near success she had been able to keep herself and save a little, a very little, money for a rainy day. It is astonishing on how little two careful girls, chumming together, can live on tour. Managing in this way it was an extravagant week when Mary spent thirty shillings upon her share of the week"s bill, and as she never earned less than three pounds she felt herself fortunate. She knew piteous things of girls who were less fortunate than she.

She came into the room and lit the gas. It was not a beautiful room, some people would have called it a two-penny-halfpenny room, but it was comfortable, there was a gracious feminine touch about all its simple appointments, and to Mary Marriott it represented home.

The chairs were of wicker-work, with cretonne cushions--sixteen-and-six each in the Tottenham Court Road. The pictures were chiefly photographs of theatrical friends, the curtains were a cheap art-green rep, the carpet plain Indian matting--so easy to clean! But the colours were all harmonious, and a shelf holding nearly two hundred books gave a finishing note of pleasant habitableness.

The girl moved with that grace which is not languid but alert. There was a spring and balance in her walk that made one think of a handsome boy; for though the lithe and beautiful figure was girlish enough, few girls learn to move from the hips, erect and unswayed, as she moved, or often suggest the temper and resilience of a foil. The simple grey tweed coat and the slim skirts that hung so superbly gave every movement its full value.

She had not yet put on her hat, but her coat would keep her warm while she ate her frugal breakfast and save the necessity of lighting the fire, as she was shortly going out.

Her hair was dead-black with the blackness of bog-oak root or of basalt.

She did not wear it in any of the modes of the moment, but gathered up in a great coiled knot at the back of her head.

In shape, Mary Marriott"s face was one of those semi-ovals which one has forgotten in the Greek rooms of the Louvre and remembered in some early Victorian miniatures. It was grave, and the corners of the almost perfect mouth were slightly depressed, like the Greek bow reversed.

The violet eyes were not hard, but they did not seem quite happy. It was almost a petulance with environment which seemed written there, and, in the words of a great master of English prose, "the eyelids were a little weary." All her face, indeed,--in the general impression it gave,--seemed to have that constant preoccupation that hints at the pursuit of something not yet won.

She might have been four or five-and-twenty. Her face was not the face of a young, unknowing girl--no early morning fruit in a basket with its bloom untouched. Yet it was still possible to imagine that her indifferent loveliness could wake suddenly to all the caresses and surrenders of spring. But the ordained day must dawn for that. Like a sundial, one might have said of her that her message was told only under the serenest skies, and that even then it must come with shadow.

She lit the stove on the landing to boil some water for her cocoa and egg. Then she took the necessary crockery from a cupboard, together with the loaf and b.u.t.ter she had bought last night.

While the simple meal was in progress her low forehead was wrinkled with thought. A long tour was just over in the fairly prosperous repertoire company with which she had been a.s.sociated for eighteen months. Usually at this season of the year the company played right through till the spring at those provincial theatres where no pantomimes were produced.

This year, however, it had been disbanded until March, when Mary was at liberty to rejoin if she had not meanwhile found another engagement.

This was what she was trying to do, at present with no success at all.

She was tired to death of the monotonous touring business. She felt that she had better work within her had she only a chance to show it. But it was horribly difficult to get that chance. She had no influence with London managers whatever. Her name was not known in any way, and as the days went by the hopelessness of her ambition seemed to become more and more apparent.

This morning the heavy pall which lay over London seemed to crush her spirits. She was so alone, life was drab and cheerless.

With a sigh she strove to banish black thoughts. "I won"t give up!" she said aloud, stamping a little foot upon the floor. "I know I"ve got something in me, and I won"t give up!"

When breakfast was over, she swept up the crumbs from the tablecloth, opened the window, and scattered them upon the leads for the birds--her invariable custom. Then she went into her bedroom, made the bed, and tidied everything, for she did all her own housework when she was "at home," though a charwoman came once a week to "turn out" the rooms.

When she had put on her hat and gloves and returned to the sitting-room she found two or three cheeky little London sparrows were chirping over their meal on the parapet, and she stood motionless to watch them. As she did so she saw a new arrival. A robin, with bright, hungry eyes, in his warm scarlet waistcoat, had joined the feathered group. Nearly all the crumbs were disposed of by this time, and, greatly daring, the little creature hopped on to the window-sill, looked timidly round him for a moment, and then flew right over to the table where the bread-latter still stood. With an odd little chirp of satisfaction the bird seized a morsel of bread as big as a nut in his tiny beak and flashed out through the window again, this time flying right away into the fog.

"Oh, you dear!--you perfect dear!" Mary said, clapping her hands. "Why didn"t you stay longer?" And as she went down the several staircases to the hall the little incident remained with her and cheered her. "I shall have some luck to-day," she thought. "I feel quite certain I shall have some luck. One of the agents will have heard of something that will suit me; I am confident of it." And all the time that she walked briskly towards the theatrical quarter of London the sense of impending good fortune remained with her, despite the increasing gloom of the day.

It was with almost a certainty of it that she turned into the district around Covent Garden and crossed the frontier as it were of the world of mimes.

It is a well-defined country, this patch of stage-land in the middle of London. The man who knows could take a map of the metropolis and pencil off an area that would contain it with the precision of a gazetteer.

Wellington Street on the east, St. Martin"s Lane on the west, Long Acre on the north, and the Strand on the south--these are its boundaries.

Yet to the ordinary pa.s.ser-by it is a _terra incognita_, its very existence is unsuspected, and he might hurry through the very centre of it without knowing that he was there at all.

Mary made straight for Virgin Lane, a long, narrow street leading from Bedford Street to Covent Garden Market--the street where all the theatrical agents have their offices. The noise of traffic sank to a distant hum as she entered it. Instead, the broken sound of innumerable conversations met her ear, for the pavements, and the road itself, were crowded with men and women who were standing about just as the jobbers and brokers do after closing time outside the Stock Exchange.

The men were nearly all clean-shaven, and they were alike in a marked fashion. Dress varied and features differed, but every face bore a definite stamp and impress. Perhaps colour had something to do with it.

Nearly every face had the look of a somewhat faded chalk drawing. They shared a certain opaqueness of skin in common. What colour there was seemed streaky--the pastel drawing seemed at close quarters. There was an odd sketchiness about these faces, no one of them quite expressed what it hinted at. The men were a rather seedy-looking lot, but the women were mostly well dressed--some of them over-dressed. But they seemed to wear their frocks as costumes, not as clothes, and to have that peculiar consciousness people have when they wear what we call "fancy dress."

Mary entered an open door with a bra.s.s-plate at the side, on which "Seaton"s Dramatic and Musical Agency" was inscribed. She walked up some uncarpeted stairs and entered two large rooms opening into each other.

The walls were covered with theatrical portraits, and both rooms were already half-full of people, men and women. A clerk sat at a writing-table in the outer room taking the names of each person as he or she came, writing them down on slips of paper, and sending them into a third inner room, which was the private sanctum of Mr. Seaton, the agent himself.

Mary sent in her name and sat down. Now and again some girl or man whom she knew would come in and do the same, generally coming up to her for a few words of conversation--for she was a popular girl. But most people"s eyes were resolutely fixed upon the door of the agent"s room, in the hope that he would appear and that a word might be obtained with him.

Now and then this actually happened. Seaton, a tall man, with a cavalry moustache, would pop his head out, instead of sending his secretary, and call for this or that person. As often as not there was a hurried rush of all the others and a chorus of agitated appeals: "Just one moment, Mr. Seaton," "I sha"n"t keep you a moment, dear boy," "I"ve something of the utmost importance to tell you."

And all the time the page-boy kept returning with the slips of paper upon which the actors and actresses had written their names upon entering, and finding out particular individuals. Some few were fortunate. "Mr. Seaton would like to see you at twelve, miss. He has something he thinks might suit you"; but by far the more usual formula was, "Mr. Seaton is very sorry, there is nothing suitable to-day; but would you mind calling again to-morrow."

At last it was Mary"s turn. She was talking to a Miss Dorothy French, a girl who had been with her on the recent tour, when the boy came up to her. "Mr. Seaton is very sorry that there is nothing suitable to-day, miss; but would you mind calling again to-morrow."

Mary sighed. "I"ve been here for two hours," she said, "and now there is nothing after all. And, somehow or other, I felt sure I should get something to-day."

She was continuing to bewail her lot when a very singular-looking man indeed entered the room and went up to the clerk.

He was tall and dressed in loose, light tweeds, a flopping terra-cotta tie, a hat of soft felt, and a turn-down collar. His hair, beard, and moustache were a curious and unusual yellow--mustard colour, in fact.

His eyes were coal black and very bright, while his face was as pale as linen.

Directly the clerk saw him he rose at once with a most deferential manner and almost ran to the agent"s private room. In a second more he was back and obsequiously conducting the man with the mustard-coloured beard into the sanctum.

Mary and her friend left the office together and went out into the choking fog, which was now much lower and thicker. Both were members of the Actors a.s.sociation, the club of ordinary members of their profession, and they planned to take their simple lunch there, read the _Stage_ and the _Era_, and see if they could hear of anything going.

As they went down the stairs Mary said, "You saw that odd-looking man with the yellow beard--evidently some one of importance? Well, do you know, Dolly, I can"t help thinking that I"ve seen him before somewhere.

I can"t remember where, but I"m almost sure of it."

The other girl started.

"What a strange thing, dear," she said. "I had exactly the same sort of feeling, but I thought it must be a mistake. I wonder who he can be?"

"He is a most unusual-looking person, though certainly distinguished---- Now I remember, Dolly!"

"Where?"

"Why, at Swindon, of course, on the last week of the tour, and, if I don"t forget, on the last night, too--the Sat.u.r.day night. He was in evening things, in a box, with another man, a clergyman. He stayed for the first two acts, but when I came on in the third act he was gone!"

"So it was! You"re quite right. Now I remember perfectly. What a curious coincidence!"