He left us directly, after pencilling a few words of introduction on his card, and soon afterwards I persuaded Madame to come with me to the Duke's Theatre.
The hall porter took the card and handed it to a young gentleman in faultless evening dress, who stood in the hall. The latter examined us at some length, enquired which was Miss La Mare, and then said that Mr. Lewis was not at present in the theatre, but that if I went round to his flat in the next street he might possibly see me. He wrote something on the card in a language which I took to be Yiddish, and handed it back to me. Word came down that Mr. Lewis would see me at once, and, closely followed by Madame Karl, I went up. We were shown into a large apartment extravagantly decorated in the Japanese manner, and so draped about the walls and ceilings with curtains that it had the appearance of a tent. The chief furniture of the place was an enormous divan extending nearly the whole length of the room; a few tables, mostly covered with bottles and glass of rare and antique design, were arranged in deliberate disorder; two large pictures represented classical and, incidentally, indelicate events; and there were a couple of capacious easy chairs; an upright grand piano, and that was all. In the middle of the divan, arrayed in a smoking suit and one that rivalled the storied coat of his ancestor Jacob, squatted, pacha fashion, Mr. Lewis.
He was a little round man, with a straight line of curling black hair across his lip, and a head that was entirely bald. As he sat there he looked like a Hebraic Humpty Dumpty. He made no attempt to rise, but welcomed us with a nod and an expression of annoyance, obviously caused by the presence of my companion.
“You are Miss La Mare, I presume,” he said glancing from the card in his hand to me. “Blanche La Mare-it should look well on a bill. And you want to be an actress. Well, what can you do, Miss La Mare?”
I answered that I could sing and he motioned me to the piano.
“Sing something light,” he said.
I selected a song out of Mirelda which I remembered. After the first verse he stopped me.
“Very nice, very nice, indeed,” he said. “And now, Miss La Mare, I cannot talk business before a third person; would your friend mind leaving us for a while?” Madame made a gesture of dissent, but though I was pretty sure what was coming, I had thought I'd better see it out, so I asked her to go.
When we were alone, Mr. Lewis left his divan and came towards me. “Well, you're a very pretty little lady,” he said. “I think you may suit me, just take your coat off, and let's see your shoulders. Ah, very nice too,” and he patted my neck affectionately. “And what pretty lips, may I?” Without waiting for an answer, he kissed me. I made no resistance; I was quite prepared to pay this sort of tribute.
“Very nice,” he said again, smacking his fat lips, “so far most satisfactory, and now let's see what sort of legs you have got.”
Madame had told me that the usual way adopted by a burlesque manager for making sure of his suitability of a girl's legs was for the girl to draw her legs tight round the members in question, and this I did.
“Ah, yes, but I'm afraid I can hardly tell by that, dear little lady,” he chuckled, “you know my patrons are very particular about legs. Don't be shy now, pull your clothes up and let me see what they really are like.”
I blushed, for I felt ashamed, but I did it. I lifted my clothes well above my knees, and as I was wearing rather short drawers, the perfect contour of my lower leg and a good deal of the upper part was plainly visible.
He asked me to stretch them apart, and I obeyed, blushing the more. He came quite close and leered at my limbs through his glasses.
“I think you'll do, my little dear,” he said. “I'll go and get a contract form. You will be undressed when I get back, won't you?”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do, my dear, you understand me perfectly. If you had been a modest girl you wouldn't have shown me your legs. I like you and I should like to engage you, but before I sign the contract I'm going to enjoy you; what's there to make a fuss about in that?”
It was a bit too cold blooded, and I could not stand it-“Well, you've made a mistake this time,” I said, “I may not be a modest girl, as you put it, but there are limits. So Good-bye.”
He did not seem angry; “Ah, well,” he said, “You're a little fool, engagements with me are good and comfortable and profitable. I like you because you're more than ordinarily pretty, but I'm not going to relax my rule. I always have my chorus girls, once at least, and I can't begin making exceptions now. Perhaps one of these days you'll think it over and come back to me again.”
“No, that I never will, you dirty old mean beast,” I answered, moving towards the door.
He laughed again; “Don't go for a minute,” he said, “I promise you I won't try to force you, but I should like to argue with you. Now, you're not a virgin, I'm certain of that; you do yourself no harm by just lying down on the sofa and letting me hare you, and you'll get an engagement. I shall not want to have you any more.” Then, before I realized what he was up to, he had slipped his hand between his legs, flicked open his fly and was holding out an erect penis for my inspection. With his other hand he grabbed my shoulder and slipped his foot between my legs, tripped me up.
I fell heavily, and if it had not been for the softness of the carpet I think I should have hurt myself. In a moment the little beast was on top of me, holding my shoulders down with his two hands while he tried to force his knee between my legs. I had fallen with one leg a little apart from the other, and he succeeded in that part of his fell purpose. He scraped my dress up somehow, and in fact got as far as banging the end of his panting member against my stomach-but that was all. I had no intention of letting the brute conquer me, and at the moment he thought victory secure, and took one of his hands from my shoulders to help guide his weapon to its grave, I let him have it with my right hand full on the end of the nose. The blow gave him fair hark from the tomb, as my young friend Charley Lothmere would have phrased it in his quaint Pink Un English, and the blood gushed from the damaged proboscis, I only made him think better of his attempt, and he got up, swearing under his breath, bursting into a roar of laughter at the sight of his discomforture.
Oddly enough, as soon as I found myself outside, I felt as randy as hell, and somewhat repented my action.
When I was back in Jermyn Street I told Madame what had happened.
She did not exactly applaud my action; “well, you know, dear, you're not a virgin,” she said, “and I must say that I don't think it would have done much harm.”
“The harm was in your being a virgin for damned near a whole volume of this immortal work,” breaks in the irrepressible Gladys, “and I'd have let the old swine fuck me if he was going to give me an engagement.”
“I would have, perhaps, if he hadn't tried to force me,” I answered.
“Force you!” says Gladys, with a tinge of scorn in her voice, “why I'm damned if I don't think its half the pleasure. Listen- would you like to hear how I was raped?”
“But, you've told me-your uncle in Birmingham.”
“Oh, he seduced me: that wasn't rape exactly, because I let him.”
This is her story:-“It was during my first typewriter's job in London,” she begins.” I was not a virgin, but I was at that time what I should call quite a moral girl, that is to say I stuck to one man. I resisted the daily efforts of my business employer, and used to hurry home in the evenings to my Bloom-bury lodging. Twice a week I met my lover who took me to dinner, and subsequently to a furnished room in one of the good old flea ravaged hotels in the Euston Road. It was there, after my young man, who knew a bit, had plentifully peppered the bed with good old Keating, we enjoyed ourselves to the top of love's young delight. We could not afford a more frequent connection, for Albert lived with his family and drew but three pounds a week for his lusts and living, while the boarding house inhabited by myself drew a strict line at young men visitors.