The Landleaguers Part 9

"Bloomsbury Square is very near. Here we are at the hotel. Now, father, before you have anything taken off the carriages, ask the prices."

Then Mr. Moss, still keeping his seat, made a little speech. "I think if Miss O'Mahony would allow me, I would counsel her against too rigid an economy. She will have heard of the old proverb,--'A penny wise and a pound foolish.'"

"'Cut your coat according to your cloth,' I have heard of that too; and I have heard of 'Burning a candle at both ends.'"

"'You shouldn't spoil your ship for a ha'porth of tar,'" said Mr.

Moss with a smile, which showed his idea, that he had the best of the argument.

"It won't matter for one night," said Mr. O'Mahony, getting out of the carriage. Half the packages had been already taken off the cab.

Rachel followed her father, and without attending to Mr. Moss got hold of her father in the street. "I don't like the look of the house at all, father, you don't know what the people would be up to. I shall never go to sleep in this house." Mr. Moss, with his hat off, was standing in the doorway, suffused, as to his face, with a bland smile.

It may be as well to say at once that the house was all that an hotel ought to be, excepting, perhaps, that the prices were a little high.

The two sitting-rooms and the two bedrooms--with the maid's room, which had also been taken--did seem to be very heavy to Rachel, who knew down to a shilling--or rather, to a dollar, as she would have said--how much her father had in his pocket. Indefinite promises of great wealth had been also made to herself; but according to a scale suggested by Mr. Moss, a pound a night, out of which she would have to keep herself, was the remuneration immediately promised. Then a sudden thought struck Miss O'Mahony. They were still standing discussing the price in one of the sitting-rooms, and Mr. Moss was also there. "Father," she said, "I'm sure that Frank would not approve."

"I don't think that he would feel himself bound to interfere," said Mr. O'Mahony.

"When a young woman is engaged to a young man it does make a difference," she replied, looking Mr. Moss full in the face.

"The happy man," said Mr. Moss, still bowing and smiling, "would not be so unreasonable as to interfere with the career of his fair _fiancee_."

"If we stay here very long," said Rachel, still addressing her father, "I guess we should have to p.a.w.n our watches. But here we are for the present, and here we must remain. I am awfully tired now, and should so like to have a cup of tea--by ourselves." Then Mr. Moss took his leave, promising to appear again upon the scene at eleven o'clock on the following day. "Thank you," said Rachel, "you are very kind, but I rather think I shall be out at eleven o'clock."

"What is the use of your carrying on like that with the man?" said her father.

"Because he's a beast."

"My dear, he's not a beast. He's not a beast that you ought to treat in that way. You'll be a beast too if you come to rise high in your profession. It is a kind of work which sharpens the intellect, but is apt to make men and women beasts. Did you ever hear of a prima donna who thought that another prima donna sang better than she did?"

"I guess that all the prima donnas sing better than I do."

"But you have not got to the position yet. Mr. Moss, I take it, was doing very well in New York, so as to have become a beast, as you call him. But he's very good-natured."

"He's a nasty, stuck-up, greasy Jew. A decent young woman is insulted by being spoken to by him."

"What made you tell him that you were engaged to Frank Jones?"

"I thought it might protect me--but it won't. I shall tell him next time that I am Frank's wife. But even that will not protect me."

"You will have to see him very often."

"And very often I shall have to be insulted. I guess he does the same kind of thing with all the singing girls who come into his hands."

"Give it up, Rachel."

"I don't mind being insulted so much as some girls do, you know. I can't fancy an English girl putting up with him--unless she liked to do as he pleased. I hate him;--but I think I can endure him. The only thing is, whether he would turn against me and rend me. Then we shall come utterly to the ground, here in London."

"Give it up."

"No! You can lecture and I can sing, and it's odd if we can't make one profession or the other pay. I think I shall have to fight with him, but I won't give it up. What I am afraid is that Frank should appear on the scene. And then, oh law! if Mr. Moss should get one blow in the eye!"

There she sat, sipping her tea and eating her toast, with her feet upon the fender, while Mr. O'Mahony ate his mutton-chop and drank his whisky and water.

"Father, now I'm coming back to my temper, I want something better than this b.u.t.tered toast. Could they get me a veal cutlet, or a bit of cold chicken?"

A waiter was summoned.

"And you must give me a little bit of ham with the cold chicken. No, father; I won't have any wine because it would get into my head, and then I should kill Mr. Mahomet M. Moss."

"My dear," said her father when the man had left the room, "do you wish to declare all your animosities before the waiter?"

"Well, yes, I think I do. If we are to remain here it will be better that they should all know that I regard this man as my schoolmaster.

I know what I'm about; I don't let a word go without thinking of it."

Then again they remained silent, and Mr. O'Mahony pretended to go to sleep--and eventually did do so. He devoted himself for the time to Home Rule, and got himself into a frame of mind in which he really thought of Ireland.

"The first flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."

Why should she not be so? She had all the sentiment necessary, all the poetry, all the eloquence, all the wit. And then when he was beginning to think whether something more than sentiment and eloquence were not necessary, he went to sleep.

But Rachel was not sleeping. Her thoughts were less stationary than her father's, and her ideas more realistic. She had been told that she could sing, and she had sung at New York with great applause. And she had gone on studying, or rather practising, the art with great diligence. She had already become aware that practice was more needed than study. All, nearly all, this man could teach her was to open her mouth. Nature had given her an ear, and a voice, if she would work hard so as to use it. It was there before her. But it had seemed to her that her career was clogged with the necessary burden of Mr.

Moss. Mr. Moss had got hold of her, and how should she get rid of him? He was the Old Man of the Sea, and how should she shake him off?

And then there was present to her alone a vision of Frank Jones. To live at Morony Castle and be Frank Jones's wife, would not that be sweeter than to sing at a theatre under the care of Mr. Mahomet M.

Moss? All the sweetness of a country life in a pleasant house by the lake side, and a husband with her who would endure all the little petulancy, and vagaries, and excesses of her wayward but affectionate temper, all these things were present to her mind. And to be Mistress Jones, who could look all the world in the face, this--as compared with the gaslight of a theatre, which might mean failure, and could only mean gaslight--this, on the present occasion, did tempt her sorely. Her moods were very various. There were moments of her life when the gaslight had its charm, and in which she declared to herself that she was willing to run all the chances of failure for the hope of success. There were moments in which Mr. Moss loomed less odious before her eyes. Should she be afraid of Mr. Moss, and fly from her destiny because a man was greasy? And to this view of her circ.u.mstances she always came at last when her father's condition pressed itself upon her. The house beside the lake was not her own as yet, nor would it be her husband's when she was married.

Nor could there be a home for her father there as long as old Mr.

Jones was alive, nor possibly when his son should come to the throne.

For a time he must go to America, and she must go with him. She had declared to herself that she could not go back to the United States unless she could go back as a successful singer. For these reasons she resolved that she would face Mr. Moss bravely and all his horrors.

"If that gentleman comes here to-morrow at eleven, show him up here,"

she said to the waiter.

"Mr. Moss, ma'am?" the waiter asked.

"Yes, Mr. Moss," she answered in a loud voice, which told the man much of her story. "Where did that piano come from?" she asked brusquely.

"Mr. Moss had it sent in," said the man.

"And my father is paying separate rent for it?" she asked.

"What's that, my dear? What's that about rent?"

"We have got this piano to pay for. It's one of Erard's. Mr. Moss has sent it, and of course we must pay till we have sent it back again.

That'll do." Then the man went.

"It's my belief that he intends to get us into pecuniary difficulties. You have only got 62 left."

"But you are to have twenty shillings a day till Christmas."