The Diamond Waterfall Read Online Free PDF

…”
    He spoke of it a lot that evening: not to bring home to her all he’d done but rather because it’d been perhaps the biggest single event in his (now rather dull) life. And of course, because he loved her. Over and over he told her, “I’d do it again tomorrow.”
    â€œOverture and beginners …”
    This hot June evening, Lily could sense already another excited expensive Jubilee audience.
    â€œThey’ve been turning them away again, Miss Greene—in their droves…. Miss Greene—the Duke of Sedley has the second box on the prompt side. …” (She thought, I mustn’t forget to sing a few notes in that direction.)
    â€œOverture and beginners …”
    The Carlton Theatre was a little larger than George Edwardes’ Gaiety. Playing the fringes of the metropolis, Lily had used to hope that one day, looking up on the prompt side, she would see one of George Edwardes’ scouts. Better, that one of his scouts would see her….
    The curtain rose on
The Duke and the Shopgirl.
The chorus sang plaintively of their long hours in the shop, and short nights in the attics above. Waked at five, wash, comb, and downstairs to receive the day’s stock.
    Enter Mr. Malcutt, manager. No real-life shop could support so many assistants for so small a stock, but how the audience loved this bevy of beautieswho bowed, and sidestepped, in stately fashion (the great stunning picture hats for Jubilee Year would not appear until Act Two—not reach their apogee until Act Three).
    Roll call.
“Where is Miss Dainty?”
The girls look at each other, finger on lips.
“Three more minutes
—and Miss Dainty is dismissed….” Consternation. And then, just in time to save her skin, the bow of her shop dress defiantly askew, here is the tomboyish, the naughty Cynthia Dainty, alias Lily Greene.
    An ovation. But Lily is used to it—a quick glance now up to the box where an evening-coated duke sits, double-barrelled opera glass trained on her. (It was from
that
box, three months ago, that Edmund first saw me.)
    Miss Dainty is safe, for today. Mr. Malcutt leaves. And the Duke of Moberley, Hero, enters.
    â€œI come to buy flowers and fruit for the most beautiful woman in London … the actress Bathsheba Rebecca.”
    And then since we have a real-life duke in the house, what about an apparent ad lib? Turning, throwing his voice (Miss Dainty: “Why do you stare so?”) and the line with extra meaning: “A duke may look at an actress, may he not?”
    He has a song in praise of Bathsheba, and when he has left, Lily sings it too—in praise of him.
    Thirty minutes to go … soon all the complications (rival for the duke’s affections, villainous uncle-solicitor, duke in disguise as a shop assistant) will be resolved. A Happy Ending beckons.
    As Lily stands center stage, a basket of fruit in her hand, the Duke of Moberley sings:
    â€œWhat a skin, what a bloom,
It’s the very finest peach
If only I could reach
(“if only he could reach” sings the chorus)
Up to her room …
What a bloom, what a skin
Would it be such a
sin?”
    Any moment now, applause. Encores. Calls for Miss Greene. Lily Greene née Lily Greenwood.
I am a success.
    The duke back again behind his opera glass. In the interval, she had been presented to him. It would do for excitement, since Edmund could not be there…. Then next, supper at the Savoy with Lionel Firth. Since Edmund …
    â€œMy dear Miss Greene, may I introduce a new, but
very
fervent admirer … my brother, Robert.”
    Although she had dined with Lionel alone twice, she was happier with him in the company of others. His dark good looks had about them something raffish, sinister almost, which at once attracted and frightened her. Cynical and astringent too, which she found satisfying after too much flattery. (No need to take him seriously, though—even less so