Arthur went to several more rehearsals, but as they progressed, as the production took shape and final form, they became to his unaccustomed mind painfully exciting, so full of ups and downs, now ominous of defeat, now presaging glorious victory. What were to the old hands ordinary incidents and everyday vicissitudes were to him tragedies or triumphs. If Mr. Etheringham said "That's better," or "Well, we've got something like it at last," he swelled with assurance, and his pockets with imaginary bullion. Whereas if Mr. Etheringham flung his script down on the table and exclaimed, "Well, it's notmymoney, thank God!"—or if it appeared that there was no sort of chance of the scenery being ready (and there very seldom is)—or if the author looked more melancholy than usual (and Mr. Beverley had an extraordinary and apparently inexhaustible gift for crescendos of melancholy)—Arthur concluded that all was "up," and that the shutters would soon follow the general example. In view of the vital bearing which success had upon his financial position, the strain was great, almost too exciting and thrilling for endurance. More than once he swore that he would not go near the place again—till "the night." But he could not keep his oath. The fascination of the venture drew him back. Besides he was attracted to his co-adventurers—to fiery Mr Etheringham, with his relentless energy, his passionate pessimism and furious outbursts; to the melancholy author, surveying as it were a folly of his youth and reckoning on the stupidity of the public to release him from "the office" and let him "do" real life; to the leading man, war-worn hero of a hundred farces, whose grey locks were to turn to raven-black, and whose girth must suffer hard constriction to dimensions that become a youthful lover—on the night; to Miss Ayesha Layard with the audacious sillinesses which her laughter and her impudent pug-nose made so strangely acceptable. Even though Arthur had really no part in it all, and nothing to do but sit and watch and smoke, he could not keep away—and he rejoiced when somebody would come and sit by, and exchange opinions. It says much for his resolutions of reform that, in spite of all, he spent several hours every day at chambers, trying to bend his mind toBenjamin on Salesand, by virtue of the human interest of that remarkable work, succeeding better than was to be expected.
Amidst these occupations and distractions the great trouble which had come upon him was no longer the continual matter of his thoughts. The sense of loss and the conviction of folly—the two were inseparably united in consciousness—became rather enemies lurking in the recesses of his mind, ready to spring out at him in hours of idleness or depression. To prevent or evade their attack was a task to which he set himself more instinctively than of deliberate purpose; but in fact the fear of them—the absolute need of keeping them down unless he were to lose heart—co-operated with the good resolutions he had made and with the new interests which had come into his life. To seek fresh objects of effort and to lay himself open to a new set of impressions—here rather than in brooding, or remorse, or would-be philosophising, lay the path of salvation for a spirit young, ardent, and elastic, healthily averse from mental hypochondria, from nursing and cosseting its wounds. He was in the mood of a football player who, sore from a hack and shaken by a hard tackle, picks himself up and rushes to take his place in the scrimmage.
Three days before "the night"—that date now served him for a calendar—he received a hasty summons from Esther Norton Ward. The lease of the Lisles' house in Hill Street was to be sold, and Judith Arden had come up to town, to settle matters relating to the furniture; some was to be disposed of, some sent to Hilsey. The Norton Wards were at home, the prospective candidate being engaged in an electoral campaign in his prospective constituency, which could be "worked" most easily from London; Judith was to stay a few days with them. Though Norton Ward himself would be away speech-making, the two ladies begged the pleasure of Arthur's company that evening.
"Then Judith will be in town on the night," thought Arthur. His eye gleamed with a brilliant inspiration. On the night he would be the proud possessor of a box at the Burlington Theatre—that, at least, his thousand pounds gave him. He instantly determined to invite his friends to share it with him. He added this invitation of his own when he sent his note accepting Esther's.
"But how comes he to be having boxes at first nights?" asked Esther.
"Oh, don't you know? He's put up some money for the play. Quite a lot, in fact," said Judith, with a laugh which sounded apologetic.
Esther raised her brows. That was not the Norton Ward idea of the way to the Woolsack. "Can he afford to—to do that sort of thing? To take chances like that?"
"Oh, of course not! He's quite poor. But, Esther, I do pray it'll be a success! He does deserve a turn of good luck. He's been splendid to us all at Hilsey."
"He was making a great goose of himself, when I was at Hilsey."
"That was before. I meant he was splendid afterwards. Fancy seeing the play after all! He's often talked to me about it."
"You're very good friends with him now?"
"Well, look what we've been through together! If the piece doesn't succeed, I'm afraid it'll be a serious business for him. He'll be very hard up."
Esther shook her head over Arthur when he came to dinner. "I knew you were a man of fashion! Now you're blossoming out as a theatrical speculator! Where does the law come in?"
"Next Wednesday morning at the very latest—and whatever has happened toDid You Say Mrs.?Only, if it's a tumble, I shan't have the money to go circuit, and—well, I hope your husband will get his rent, but I expect he'd be wiser to kick me out of his chambers."
"As bad as that? Then we really must pray, Judith, for Frank's sake as well as Arthur's!"
"Do tell us about the play! Give us an idea of it."
"Oh, well, the plot's not the great thing, you know. It's the way it's written. And Ayesha Layard and Willie Spring are so good. Well, there's a dancing club—a respectable one. A man may take a man, but he may only take a woman if she's his wife or sister. The man Spring plays is persuaded to take a friend and his best girl in, and to let the girl call herself Mrs. Skewes—Skewes is Spring's name in the piece. Well, of course, as soon as he's done that, simply everybody Skewes knows begins to turn up—his rich uncle, the rich girl he wants to marry, his village parson—all the lot. And then the other man's people weigh in, and everybody gets mixed—and so on. And there's a comic waiter who used to know Flo (Ayesha Layard plays Flo, of course) and insists on writing to her mother to say she's married. Oh, it's all awfully well worked out!"
"I'm sure it'll be very amusing," said Esther Norton Ward politely. "But isn't it rather like that farce they had at the—the Piccadilly, wasn't it?—a year or two ago?"
"Oh no! I remember the piece you mean; but that wasn't a dancing club—that was an hotel."
"So it was. I forgot," said Esther, smiling.
Arthur burst into a laugh. "I'm a fool! Of course it's been done a hundred times. But Beverley's got in a lot of good stuff. In the second act Flo has hidden in Skewes' bedroom, and of course everybody turns up there, and he has to get rid of them by pretending he's going to have a bath—keeps taking his coat off, to make 'em clear out." Arthur chuckled at the remembrance. "But of course Ayesha's the finest thing. Her innocent cheek is ripping!"
"Why does she want to hide in his room?"
"She took another woman's bag from the club by accident, and the manager has his suspicions about her and consults the police. But I won't tell you any more, or it'll spoil the evening."
"I think we know quite enough to go on with," laughed Esther. "I wish Frank could come with us, but he's got a meeting every night next week. Why don't you go down with him one night? I think it would amuse you."
"I will, like a shot, if he'll take me. I'm not sure, though, that I'm a Conservative."
"That doesn't matter. Besides Frank will make you one. He's very persuasive."
After Arthur had said good-night and gone, the two women sat in silence for a few minutes.
"It sounds awful stuff, Judith," said Esther at last, in a tone of candid regret.
"Yes, it does. But still those things do succeed often."
"Oh yes, and we'll hope!" She glanced at Judith. "He doesn't seem very—lovelorn!"
"He was pretty bad at first." She smiled faintly. "I had to be awfully disagreeable. Well, I'm quite good at it. Ever since then he's behaved wonderfully. But I don't know what he feels."
"Well, I hope he'll settle down to work, after all this nonsense."
"He hasn't got any work to settle to, poor boy!"
"Frank says it always comes if you watch and wait."
"I expect it's the successful men who say that." They had all been gay at dinner, but now Judith's voice sounded depressed and weary. Esther moved nearer to her side on the sofa.
"You've had a pretty hard time of it too, haven't you?" she asked sympathetically.
"It may be a funny thing, but I miss Bernadette dreadfully. She was always an interest anyhow, wasn't she? And without her—with just Godfrey and Margaret—Hilsey's awfully flat. You see, we're none of us people with naturally high spirits. Arthur is, and they used to crop out in spite of everything; so it wasn't so bad while he was there. Godfrey and Margaret are always wanting to press him to come back, but he must stay and work, mustn't he?"
Esther took a sidelong glance at her—rather an inquisitive glance—but she said no more than, "Of course he must. He can come to you at Christmas—unless he's got another farce or some other nonsense in his head."
Esther had taken Bernadette's flight with just a shrug of her shoulders; that had seemed to her really the only way to take it. She had not been surprised—looking back on her Sunday at Hilsey and remembering Bernadette's manner, she now declared that she had expected the event—and it was no use pretending to be much shocked. To her steady and calm temperament, very strong in affection but a stranger to passion, a creature of Bernadette's waywardness could assert no real claim to sympathy, however much her charm might be acknowledged. She was surprised that Judith should miss her so much, and with so much regret. For Arthur's infatuation she still could have only scorn, however kindly the scorn might be. In her eyes Bernadette had never been really a wife, and hardly in any true sense a mother; by her flight she merely abdicated positions which she had never effectively filled. She would not even give her credit for courage in going away, in facing the scandal; there she preferred to see only Oliver Wyse's strong hand and imperious will.
On the other hand, there was a true sympathy of mind between her and Judith, and she was grieved, and rather indignant, at the heavy burden which the train of events had laid on Judith's shoulders. She asked something better for her than to be merely the crutch of the crippled household at Hilsey—for which again her self-reliant nature and courageous temper had more pity than esteem. It would be a shame if Judith sank into a household hack, bearing the burden which properly belonged to Bernadette's pretty shoulders. But Judith herself betrayed no sense of hardship; she took what she was doing as a matter of course, though she did regret Bernadette's loss and Arthur's absence. She pined for the vanished elements of excitement and gaiety in the household; but none the less she meant to stick to it. So Esther read her mind. But there was another question—one of proportion. How much of the pining was for Bernadette and how much for Arthur?
It was dress rehearsal. Mr. Etheringham was a martinet about admitting people to this function; there were only half-a-dozen or so scattered about the stalls—and the author prowling restlessly up and down the pit. Mr. Etheringham sat by Arthur, his hat over his fiery eyes, regarding the performance with a sort of gloomy resentment. He interfered only once or twice—his work was done—but Arthur heard him murmur, more than once or twice, "Damned bad—too late to change!"—and therewith he sank a little lower down in his seat. Arthur did not laugh much now, though he expected to to-morrow; he was too busy thinking whether other people would be amused to be amused himself. All he really knew was that Willie Spring was acting his very heart out, trying to get every ounce out of the part; and so was Ayesha, for all her air of utter unconcern. He ventured on an observation to this effect to Mr. Etheringham when the curtain fell on the first act.
"They're all right. If it fails, it's my fault—and Beverley's." He rushed off "behind," and his voice was heard through the curtain in exhortation and correction.
Joe Halliday came across from the other side of the house and sat down in the vacant seat. "Right as rain!" he said emphatically. "You may order your motor car, Arthur."
"I think I won't actually give the order till Wednesday morning, old fellow."
"May as well. It's a cert. Big money! Wish I had your share in it."
"I sometimes wish I had mine out," Arthur confessed.
"Oh, rot, man! It's the stroke of your life, this is."
Mr. Etheringham returned, glared at the imperturbable Joe, and selected another stall. Second Act.
The Second Act went well, but when they came to set the Third, there was a bad breakdown in the scenery. A long long wait—and Mr. Etheringham audible from behind the curtain, raging furiously. Mr. Beverley emerged from the pit and came up behind Joe Halliday and Arthur.
"Just my luck!" he observed, in the apathetic calm of utter despair.
"Jolly good thing it happened to-night, and not to-morrow!" exclaimed Joe.
"But it probably will happen to-morrow too," the author insisted.
Arthur was laughing at the two when Miss Ayesha Layard, in the third of her wonderful frocks, came in front and tripped up to them.
"If anybody's cold, they'd better go behind and listen to old Langley," she remarked, as she sank into the stall by Arthur's side. She had a large towel tied round her waist, and adjusted it carefully beneath and round her before she trusted her frock to the mercies of the seat. "I once spoilt a frock in my early days, and old Bramston boxed my ears for it," she explained to Arthur. Then she turned round and regarded Mr. Beverley with an air of artless and girlish admiration. "To think that he wrote this masterpiece! He who is known to, and will soon be adored by, the public as Claud Beverley, but who in private life——"
"Shut up, will you!" commanded Mr. Beverley with sudden and fierce fury. "If you do happen to—to——" He was in a difficulty for a phrase and ended without finding it—"Well, you might have the decency to hold your tongue about it."
"Sorry, sorry, sorry! Didn't know it was such a secret as all that." The offended man looked implacable. "If you don't forgive me, I shall go and drown myself in that bath! Oh, well, he won't, so never mind! Here, Joe, take him out and give him a drink. There's just time before closing."
"First-rate idea!" Joe agreed cordially. "Come along, old chap." Mr. Beverley allowed himself to be led away, mournfully yet faintly protesting.
"Funny thing he should mind having his real name known, isn't it? I'm sure I shouldn't mind mine being known, if I had one, but I don't think I have. I recollect being called 'Sal' at the theatre. Old Bramston—the one who boxed my ears, as I said—named me. He'd been out in the East as a young man and liked reading about it. So, when he named me, he combined his information, like the man in Dickens, and made up the name you see on the bills. It'll descend to posterity in old Langley Etheringham's memoirs. He's writing them, his wife told me so. Well, what do you think of the theatre—inside view—Mr. Lisle?"
"I think it's extraordinarily interesting."
"I've been in it all my life, and I wouldn't change. It takes your mind off things so—sort of gives you two lives. You come down here in the blues over your debts, or your love-affairs, or something—and in five minutes you're somebody else, or—" She gave a little laugh—"rotting somebody else, which is nearly as good."
"By Jove, that's exactly what it does do!" cried Arthur. "It's done me heaps of good."
"You'll have got something for your money, anyhow, won't you?"
"Oh, but I want to get more than that!"
"So do I!" she laughed. "I want the salary. But one never knows. This time to-morrow we may be waiting for the laughs that don't come. You can always pretty well hear Willie asking for them in the proper places. And when they don't come, it's such a sell that it makes me want to giggle myself. It might work! What the notices call my infectious laughter!"
"Well, that's just what your laughter is."
"They catch a word like that from one another—like mumps or measles. I'm always 'infectious;' Willie's always 'indefat'—'indefatig'—you know; I can never get to the end of it! Bramston used to be 'sterling' always; it made him just mad when he saw the word—used awful language!" She laughed, "infectiously," at the recollection.
The hammering behind the curtain, which had been incessant during their talk, stopped. A sharp voice rang out, "Third Act!" There was a scurry of feet. Mr. Etheringham came in front, very hot and dishevelled; Mr. Beverley reappeared, only to bolt into his burrow in the pit. Miss Layard rose to her feet, carefully lifting the precious frock well clear of her ankles.
"What do you mean by keeping me waiting like this, Mr. Etheringham?" she asked with elaborate haughtiness.
But poor Mr. Etheringham was at the end of his tether—beyond repartee, even beyond fury.
"For heaven's sake, Ayesha my dear, take hold of this damned third act, and pick itup!" he implored, with the old Weary-Titan lift of his hands.
"There is a bit of avoirdupois about it, isn't there?" she remarked sympathetically. "All the same, it's suffered a sea-change under your accomplished hands, Langley."
"Oh, get round, there's a good girl, or you'll keep the stage waiting."
"What one weak woman can do!" she said, with a nod and a smile as she turned away.
Mr. Etheringham sank into a stall and lay back—with his eyes shut. "I should like to have the blood of those stage-hands," Arthur heard him mutter.
His eyes remained closed right through the act; he knew it too well to need to see it—every position, every speech, every inflection, every gesture. He did not speak either; only his hands now and then rose up above his head and dropped again gently. When at last the curtain fell, he opened his eyes, took off his hat, smoothed his hair, replaced the hat, and turned to Arthur with a sudden expression of peace and relief on his stormy countenance.
"Now it's in the hands of the gods, Mr. Lisle," he said.
Arthur was lighting a cigarette. In the intervals of the operation he asked, "Well, what do you think?"
Mr. Etheringham looked at him with a tolerant smile. "Think? My dear fellow, to-morrow's the night! What on earth's the use of thinking?"
"Good-night. Thanks awfully for coming, Mrs. Norton Ward! And you too, Judith! Beg pardon? Oh, yes, I hope so—with just a few alterations. Wants a bit of pulling together, doesn't it? What? Oh, yes, only quite a few—one fellow in the gallery really started it. What? Oh, yes, up till then it was all right—Yes, it will be really, I'm sure. Still I wish——"
"Move up there!" from the policeman.
"All the same I wish—Well, good-night. See you soon, shan't I?"
Thus Arthur, outside the Burlington Theatre, bade farewell to the two ladies who had honoured his box with their presence—Arthur very suave, collected, smiling, easy, but rather pale in the face. Under pressure from the policeman, Esther's car drove off.
Esther gave a long sigh of relief. Judith had thrown herself back in the other corner.
"It was very kind of him to take us," said Esther, "but really what a trying evening, Judith! At first it seemed all right—I laughed anyhow—but then—Oh, of course, they'd no business to boo; it's rude and horrid. I was so sorry for them all—especially that pretty girl and the poor man who worked so hard. Still, you know, I couldn't see that it wasveryfunny."
No answer came from Judith's corner.
"And a farce ought to be funny, oughtn't it?" Esther resumed. "Some plays one goes to without expecting to be amused, of course, or—or even thrilled, or anything of that sort. One goes to be—to be—well, because of one's interest in the drama. But I always look forward to a farce; I expect to enjoy myself at it."
Still no answer from Judith in the corner.
"And really I don't think I'll ever go again with anybody who's got anything to do with the play. You felt him expecting you to laugh—and you couldn't! Or you laughed in the wrong place. He didn't laugh much himself, if you come to that. Too anxious perhaps! And when he went out between the acts and came back, and you asked him what the men were saying, and he said, 'Oh, they always try to crab it!'—Well, that didn't make it any more cheerful, did it?"
Response being still lacking, and Esther having pretty well exhausted her own impressions of the first night ofDid You Say Mrs.?at the Burlington, she peered enquiringly into the other corner of the car.
"Are you asleep, Judith?" she asked.
"No, I'm not asleep. Never mind me, Esther."
"Well, why don't you say something?"
"What is there to say?"
Esther peered more perseveringly into the corner. Then she stretched out her hand towards the switch of the electric light.
"Don't," said Judith, very sharply.
Esther's eyes grew wide. "Why, you silly girl, I believe you're——!"
"Yes, I am, and it's a very good thing to cry over. Think of all those poor people, working so hard, and—it's all for nothing, I suppose! And Arthur! How brave he was over it! He couldn't have been more—more attentive and—and gay if it had been the greatest success. But I knew what he was feeling. I laughed like a maniac—and my hands are sore. What's the use? Who's the idiot who wrote it?"
"Well, if you come to that, I daresay the poor man is just as much upset as Arthur Lisle is."
Judith was in no mood for impartial justice. "Getting them to produce a thing like that is almost obtaining money under false pretences. Why don't theyknow, Esther?"
"I'm sure I don't know. It's easy enough to tell when you see it."
"I was awfully frightened even when he told us about it."
"At dinner, you mean? Yes, so was I. But it was no use saying——"
"Oh, of course, it was no use saying anything about it! What will he do now? Will he get any of his money back, I wonder!" Judith might be seen through the gloom dabbing her cheeks forlornly. "And I did think it was going to be a jolly evening!" she ended.
"It wasn't that," Esther observed with ample emphasis. Protected by the gloom, she drew nearer to Judith, put her arm round her, and kissed her. "You mustn't mind so much," she whispered. "Men have to take tumbles all the time, and Arthur took his bravely."
"Oh, after the other thing it is such hard luck! And I—we—didn't know how to—to help or console him. I wish Bernadette had been there! She'd have known how to do that."
Esther frowned at the idea of this very desperate remedy. A forlorn silence fell on the car, till they reached home and got out. In the hall Esther laid a hand on Judith's arm.
"Frank will be back by now. Are you equal to facing him?" she asked.
"I'd sooner not, if you don't mind. I shall go to bed."
"Don't fret. Perhaps they will—pull it together, didn't he say?—really!"
Judith shook her head mournfully and trailed off upstairs to bed. The hostess stood watching her guest's progress for a moment with what seemed a rather critical eye, and then went in to her husband's study.
Frank Norton Ward was seated in front of a tray, and was consuming cold beef and claret with an excellent appetite. An open-air meeting at seven, followed by a church bazaar (with "a few words" from the prospective candidate) from eight-thirty till ten, had been his useful, honourable, but exhausting evening.
"Well, here you are!" he greeted his wife cheerfully. "Had a good time, Esther?"
His question opened the gates again to the doleful flood of Esther's impressions. Her husband listened with a smile; to the detached mind a fiasco has always its amusing side, and Norton Ward was by no means particularly concerned about Arthur or his fortunes. He finished his claret and lit his pipe during the sorrowful recital, and at the end of it remarked, "Well, it serves him right, really. That sort of thing won't do him any good—it's not his job—and perhaps now he'll see it. Didn't Judith come in with you?"
"She's gone to bed."
"Oh, has she? I say, I had a jolly good meeting to-night—though it's supposed to be a Radical centre. I——"
"She was reduced to tears, coming home in the car. Tears, Frank!"
"That's rather a strong order, isn't it? She'll be all right in the morning. The fact is, there's been a good deal of trouble at the biscuit works, and since old Thorne's a Liberal, his men——"
"She must be a good deal—well, interested in him to do that!"
"Wouldn't mind giving him one in the eye. What? I beg your pardon, my dear?"
Even in the happiest marriages husband and wife do not always pursue the same train of thought. But Esther was very dutiful. "Never mind! Tell me about the meeting," she said. But she went on thinking of Judith and her tears.
After he had seen his friends off, Arthur turned back into the lobby of the theatre. The crowd, that destructive crowd, was thinning quickly; at the tail-end of it there came, hurrying along, a figure vaguely familiar. The next instant its identity was established. There was no mistaking the tremor of the eye. It was Mr. Mayne, of Wills and Mayne, ofTiddes v. The Universal Omnibus Company, Limited.. As he came up, he saw Arthur, and gave him a quick glance and a faint smile, but no express recognition. He hurried by, as it were furtively, and, before Arthur had time to claim acquaintance, disappeared into the street. "Shouldn't have imagined he was much of a first-nighter!" thought Arthur, as he made his way towards a little group standing by the Box Office.
The two Sarradet men were there, talking in low voices but volubly, gesticulating, looking very angry and somehow unusually French. Marie stood with her arm in Sidney Barslow's, rather as if she needed his support, and the big man himself, smiling composedly, seemed as though he were protecting the family. Fronting them stood Joe Halliday, smoking a cigarette and listening to the voluble talk with a pleasant smile.
But when the two men saw Arthur, their talk stopped—silenced perhaps by the presence of a pecuniary disaster greater than that which had befallen the Sarradet house. Joe seized his opportunity and remarked, "After all, Mr. Sarradet, you didn't exactly suppose you were investing in a gilt-edged security!"
"I say, where's poor old Beverley?" Arthur asked.
"Behind, I think—talking it over with Etheringham. Well, let 'em talk!" He shaped his lips for a whistle, but thought better of it. "We'll have another flutter some day, Mr. Sarradet!" he remarked with an air of genial encouragement.
"Flutter!" The old man was choking with indignation. "If I ever——!"
"Well, we'd best be getting home," Sidney interposed, with an authority which made the suggestion an order. "Come along, Marie."
"Bring Pops, Raymond," Marie directed. She gave her free hand to Arthur, raising mournful eyes to his. "What a terrible experience!" she murmured.
"He calls it a flutter!"—A fragment of old Sarradet's indignation was blown back from the pavement into the lobby.
"Not sports!" Joe mused regretfully. "Not what I call sports, Arthur! I'm really rather sorry we didn't manage to rope old Sidney in too. Looking so dashed wise, wasn't he? Come along, let's find Claud—and I want to see Ayesha."
"I suppose we shall have to settle what's to be done about it, shan't we?"
"We'll hear what Langley thinks."
They found a little party in Mr. Etheringham's room—that gentleman himself, standing with his back to the fireplace, smoking a cigar; Willie Spring, an exhausted volcano, lying back in a chair, staring at the ceiling; Miss Ayesha Layard on the sofa, smiling demurely; and the author seated at the table with the script of the play in front of him; he was turning over the leaves quickly and with an appearance of eager industry.
"Now we know what to think, don't we, Mr. Lisle? They've done our thinking for us." Mr. Etheringham smiled quite pleasantly. He was not at all fiery now.
Arthur laid his hand on Mr. Beverley's shoulder. "It's an infernal shame, old chap. I'm most awfully sorry."
"You gentlemen are two of the principal shareholders," Mr. Etheringham went on to Arthur and Joe. "Perhaps you'd like to talk over the situation privately?"
"We're all right as we are—glad of words of wisdom from any of you! How do we stand, Langley?" said Joe, sitting down on the sofa by Miss Layard. "What's the situation?"
"Well, you know that as well as I do. There's the production to be paid—about twelve hundred, I reckon—and we run into about eight hundred a week."
"And what—if any—business shall we play to?"
"You can't tell that. You can only guess—and you'd better not guess high! I should say myself that the money might last a fortnight—possibly three weeks. Some of 'em'll probably look in now and then, you know—and even if we paper the whole house, the bars bring in a bit."
"I'd go a bit more," said Joe, "only the truth is I haven't got a bob—absolutely stony!" He jingled the money in his pocket. "Hear that—it's the last of it!"
"If you think there's any chance," Arthur began eagerly, "I think I could——"
Mr. Willie Spring's eyes came down from the ceiling and sought those of Mr. Etheringham; Mr. Spring also shook his head very slightly and smiled a tired smile.
"I don't think we'd better talk about that at this stage," said Mr. Etheringham. "At least that's my advice. Of course, if later on the business warranted the hope that——"
"Well, anyhow, let's go on as long as the money lasts," said Arthur.
"All right. Can you be ready with those cuts and the new lines by to-morrow afternoon, Beverley?"
"Yes." He had never stopped turning over the pages of the script.
"Very well, I'll call a rehearsal for two o'clock."
Ayesha Layard rose from the sofa. "Well, good-night," she said.
"May I wait for you?" asked Joe.
"Yes, if you like, but I want to speak to Mr. Lisle first." As she passed Arthur, she took hold of his arm and led him to her dressing-room. "Just a second!" she said to her dresser. When the woman had gone out, she planted herself in the chair before the looking-glass and regarded Arthur with a smile. "Were you really ready to put up more money?" she asked. "Are you a millionaire? Because you're not in love with me, and that's the only other thing that might explain it."
"I hate being beat," Arthur protested.
"Happened to you before, hasn't it? In other directions, I mean."
Just as he was looking at her, wondering how much she knew—for something she evidently knew—a knock came at the door, and the dresser appeared with a telegram in her hand. "You're Mr. Lisle, sir, aren't you? This came for you just as the curtain went up, and it got forgotten till now." She gave it to Arthur and went out again.
"May I read it?" He opened it. "Good luck to you to-night. I wish I could be with you, but circumstances don't permit—Bernadette." The despatch came from Genoa. Bernadette had looked out for the doings ofDid You Say Mrs.?in the English papers!
"Yes, it's happened to me before," said Arthur, smiling rather grimly. He put the piece of paper into her hands. "A telegram of good wishes—come to hand rather late."
"Bernadette? A lady friend? Oh, I remember!Thelady-friend, isn't it? She thinks of you! Touching!"
"I find it so, rather. But, I say, aren't you tired to death?"
"Next door! But I just wanted to say good-bye to you. I like you, you know. You're pleasant, and you lose like a gentleman, and you haven't rounded on Willie and me, and told us it's all our fault."
"Your fault indeed! You were splendid. And mayn't it be just good-night, and not good-bye, Miss Layard?"
"Call it which you like. I know what it will be. This isn't your line, really. Good-night then—and don't give Joe any more money. He'd break the Bank of England, if they'd let him."
"I won't then. And I like you, if I may say so. And we're all tremendously in your debt." He raised the hand she gave him to his lips and kissed it in a courtly fashion.
He looked handsome as he did it, and she was amused that he should do it. She looked up at him with dancing eyes and a merry laugh. "Kiss me good-bye, then, really, if you mean it—and don't be too disgusted with all of us to-morrow morning!"
He kissed her cheek, laughing. "Au revoir!I shan't be disgusted with you anyhow. Good-night."
He walked to the door, and was just going to open it when she spoke again. "Mr. Lisle!"
"Yes." He turned round. She was standing by the table now; her face was very bright; she seemed to struggle against another spasm of laughter. "In the stress of business you've forgotten your telegram from—Bernadette!" She waved the missive in her hand, holding her mutinous lips closely together.
Arthur stood for a moment, looking at the lady and the missive. Then he broke into a hearty roar; she let herself go too; their laughter rang through the little room. The door was flung open, and Joe Halliday appeared on the threshold in a state of some indignation.
"Pretty good to keep me waiting out in the cold while you—what have you been up to, Ayesha?"
"Nothing that concerns you, Joe. I've been giving Mr. Lisle some medicine."
"I should have thought we'd all had enough of that to-night!"
"It's a different sort—and different from any I shall give you. But I think it did him good, from the symptoms. Oh, here's your wire, Mr. Lisle!"
She seemed to sparkle with mischief as she gave it to him. "Now mind you don't give Joe any medicine!" he said.
"The bottle's finished, for to-night at all events." With this gay promise and a gay nod she let him go.
Pleased at the promise—quite absurdly pleased at it, in spite of its strict time-limit—and amused with the whole episode, he put Bernadette's telegram in his pocket, and walked along towards the stage-door, smiling happily. He was not thinking about the telegram, nor about the fiasco of the evening, nor of his thousand pounds, very little or none of which would ever find its way back into his pocket. The emotions which each and all of these subjects for contemplation might have been expected to raise had been put to rout. A very fine medicine, that of Miss Ayesha Layard's!
He said good-night to the doorkeeper and gave him a sovereign; he said good-night to the fireman and gave him ten shillings; it was no moment for small economies, and he was minded to march out with colours flying. But he was not quite done with the Burlington Theatre yet. Outside was a tall figure which moved to his side directly he appeared. It was Mr. Claud Beverley, carrying his play in a large square envelope.
"Are you going anywhere, Lisle?" he asked.
"Only home—up Bloomsbury way."
"May I walk with you! The tube at Tottenham Court Road suits me to get home."
"Why, of course! Come along, old chap." They started off together up Shaftesbury Avenue. Mr. Beverley said nothing till they had got as far as the Palace Theatre. Then he managed to unburden his heart.
"I want to tell you how sorry I am to—to have let you in like this, Lisle. I feel pretty badly about it, I can tell you, for all their sakes. But you've been specially—well, you took me on trust, and I've let you in."
"My dear fellow, it's all right. It's much worse for you than for me. But I hope the new play will put you all right."
The author would not be silenced. "And I want to say that if ever I can do you a turn—a real good turn—I'll do it. If it's to be done, I'll do it!"
"I'm sure you will," said Arthur, who did not in the least see what Mr. Beverley could do for him, but was touched by his evident sincerity.
"There's my hand on it," said Mr. Beverley with solemnity. There in Charing Cross Road they shook hands on the bargain. "Don't forget! Good-night, Lisle. Don't forget!" He darted away across the road and vanished into the bowels of the earth.
Arthur Lisle strolled on to his lodgings, humming a tune. Good sort, weren't they, all of them? Suddenly he yawned, and became aware of feeling very tired. Been an evening, hadn't it?
Half-an-hour later he tumbled into bed, with a happy smile still on his lips. He could not get the picture of that girl waving the telegram at him out of his head.
IN the end the Syndicate left to Joe Halliday the responsibility of deciding on the future of the unfortunate farce, so far as it had a future on which to decide. On mature reflection Joe was for acting on the sound business principle of 'cutting a loss,' and the turn of events reinforced his opinion. They had taken the Burlington for four weeks certain, and the liability for rent was a serious fact and a heavy item to reckon with. Another dramatic venture wanted a home, and Joe had the opportunity of sub-letting the theatre for the last two weeks of the term. By and with the advice of Mr. Etheringham he closed with the offer.Did You Say Mrs?dragged on for its fortnight, never showing vitality enough to inspire any hope of its recovering from the rude blow of the first night. In the day-time new figures filled the stage of the Burlington, new hopes and fears centred there. Only Mr. Etheringham remained, producing the new venture with the same fiery and inexhaustible energy, lifting dead weights with his hands, toiling, moiling, in perpetual strife. Gone soon were all the others who had become so familiar, from the great Mr. Spring, the Indefatigable, downwards, some to other engagements, some left "out"—débrisfrom the wreck of the unhappyDid You Say Mrs?
Gone too, soon, was Miss Ayesha Layard with her infectious laugh. For her sake Arthur had sat through the farce once again—not even for her sake twice, so inconceivably flat had it now become to him. He had gone round and seen her, but she had other guests and no real conversation was possible. Then he saw in the papers that she was to go to America; a manager from that country had come to see the piece, and, though he did not take that, he did take Miss Layard, with whose talents he was much struck. He offered a handsome salary, and she jumped at it. Joe let her go three days before the end of the hopeless little run. One of the last items of the Syndicate's expenditure was a bouquet of flowers, presented to her at Euston on the morning of her departure. Arthur went to see her off, found her surrounded by folk strange to him, had just a hand-clasp, a hearty greeting, a merry flash from her eyes, and, as he walked off, the echo of her laugh for a moment in his ears. The changes and chances of theatrical life carried her out of his orbit as suddenly as she had come into it; she left behind her, as chief legacy, just that vivid memory which linked her so fantastically with Bernadette.
So the whole thing seemed to him to end—the Syndicate, the speculation, his voyage into the unknown seas of the theatre. It was all over, shattered by a blow almost as sudden, almost as tragical, as that which had smitten his adoration itself. Both of these things, always connected together for him by subtle bonds of thought and emotion, making together the chief preoccupation of the last six months of his life, now passed out of it, and could occupy his days no longer. They had come like visions—Bernadette in her barouche, the glittering thousands dangled in Fortune's hand—and seemed now to depart in like fashion, transitory and unsubstantial.
Yet to Arthur Lisle they stood as the two greatest things that had up to now happened in his life, the most significant and the most vivid. Set together—as they insisted on being set together from the beginning to the end, from the first impulse of ambition roused by Bernadette to the coming of her telegram on that momentous evening—they made his first great venture, his most notable experience. They had revealed and developed his nature, plumbed feeling and tested courage. He was different now from Marie Sarradet's placid, contented, half-condescending wooer, different from him who had worshipped Bernadette with virgin eyes—different now even from the forsaken and remorseful lover of that black hour at Hilsey. He had received an initiation—a beginning of wisdom, an opening of the eyes, a glimpse of what a man's life may be and hold and do for him. He had seen lights glimmering on the surface of other lives, and now and then, however dimly and fitfully, revealing their deeper waters.
Sitting among the ruins—if tangible results were regarded, scarcely any other word could be considered appropriate—and acutely awake to what had happened to his fortunes, he was vaguely conscious of what had happened to himself. The feeling forbade remorse or despair; it engendered courage. It enabled him to infuse even a dash of humour into his retrospect of the past and his survey of the present. If he still called himself a fool, he did it more good-naturedly, and perhaps really more in deference to the Wisdom of the Wise and the Prudence of the Elders than out of any genuine or deep-seated conviction. And anyhow, if he had been a fool, he reckoned that he had learnt something from it. Everybody must be a fool sometimes. In prudent eyes he had been a tolerably complete one, and had paid and must pay for the indulgence. But it had not been all loss—so his spirit insisted, and refused sack-cloth and ashes for its wear.
Meanwhile, however, the bill! Not the rather nebulous balance-sheet of his soul's gains and losses, but the debit account in hard cash. A few sovereigns from the five hundred still jingled forlornly in his pocket; a few might possibly, thanks to the sub-let, stray back from the Burlington Theatre, but not many. In round figures he was fifteen hundred pounds out, and was left with an income barely exceeding a hundred pounds a year. Now that would not support the life and meet the necessary expenses of counsel learned in the law. Other prospects he had none; what his mother had Anna was to take. He did not want to give up the Bar; he still remembered Mr. Tiddes with a thrill; Wills and Mayne were alive—at any rate Mayne was; a third defeat from fortune was not to his liking. Moreover to abandon his chosen career would nearly break his mother's heart. He came to a swift determination to "stick it out" until he had only a thousand pounds left. If that moment came, a plunge into something new! For the present, all useful expenditure, but strict economy! He instructed his broker to sell out two hundred pounds' worth of stock and felt that he had achieved a satisfactory solution of his financial troubles.
For a mind bent on industry—and Arthur flattered himself that his really was now—his chambers offered new opportunities. Norton Ward had got his silk gown. His pupils had disappeared; Arthur could have the run of his work, could annotate and summarise briefs, and try his hand on draft "opinions." This was much more alluring work than reading at large. He could sit in court too, and watch the progress of the cases with a paternal, a keener, and a more instructed interest. This was how he planned to spend the winter sittings, rejecting the idea of going circuit—the chances of gain were so small, the expenses involved so great. But in the immediate future things fell out differently from what he had planned.
The morning after the Courts opened, he received a summons to go and see Mr. Justice Lance in his private room. The old Judge gave him a very friendly greeting and, being due to take his seat in five minutes, opened his business promptly.
"My old friend Horace Derwent, who generally comes with me as Marshal, is down with influenza and won't be available for three or four weeks. Esther Norton Ward was at my house yesterday and, when she heard it, she suggested that perhaps you'd like to take his place. I shall be very glad to take you, if you care to come. If anything crops up for you here, you can run up—because Marshals aren't absolutely indispensable to the administration of justice. Your function is to add to my comfort and dignity—and I shan't let that stand in your way."
"It's most awfully kind of you. I shall be delighted," said Arthur.
"Very well. We start on Monday, and open the Commission at Raylesbury. My clerk will let you know all the details. If you sit in court regularly, I don't think your time will be wasted, and a grateful country pays you two guineas a day—not unacceptable, possibly, at this moment!" His eyes twinkled. Arthur felt that his theatrical speculation had become known.
"It's uncommonly acceptable, I assure you, Sir Christopher," said he.
"Then let's hope poor Horace Derwent will make a leisurely convalescence," smiled the Judge.
In high spirits at the windfall, Arthur started off in the afternoon to thank Esther for her good offices. He had not seen her since they parted, with forced cheerfulness, at the doors of the Burlington Theatre; neither had he carried out his idea of going to one of her husband's meetings; the urgency of his own affairs would have dwarfed those of the nation in his eyes, even had his taste for politics been greater than it was.
"I thought you'd like it. You'll find Sir Christopher a pleasant chief, and perhaps it'll keep you out of mischief for a few weeks—and in pocket-money," said Esther, in reply to his thanks.
"I've got no more mischief in view," Arthur remarked, almost wistfully. "My wild course is run."
"I hope so. Did you ever believe in that terrible farce?"
"Oh yes, rather! That is, I believed in it generally—Moments of qualm! That's what made it so interesting."
"That evening, Arthur! I declare I still shudder! What did you do after you got rid of us? Knock your head against the wall, or go to bed to hide your tears?"
Arthur smiled. "Not exactly, Mrs. Norton Ward. I took part in a sort of Privy Council, about ways and means, though there weren't any of either, to speak of—and Claud Beverley swore eternal friendship to me, heavens knows why! And I had a talk with Miss Layard."
Esther was looking at his smiling face in some amazement; he seemed to find the memory of the evening pleasant and amusing. Her own impressions were so different that she was stirred to resentment. "I believe I wasted some good emotion on you," she observed severely.
"Oh, I forgot! I had a telegram from Bernadette—from Genoa. Good wishes, you know—but I never got it till it was all over." He was smiling still, in a ruminative way now.
"Very attentive of her! It seems to amuse you, though."
"Well, it was rather funny. It came when I was in Ayesha Layard's dressing-room, talking to her, and she—well, rather made fun of it."
Esther eyed him with curiosity. "Did you like that?" she asked.
"I didn't seem to mind it at the time." His tone was amused still, but just a little puzzled. "No, I didn't mind it."
"I believe—yes, I do—I believe you were flirting with the impudent little creature! Oh, you men! This is what we get! We cry our eyes out for you, and all the time you're——!"
"Men must work and women must weep!" said Arthur.
"That's just what Judith was doing—literally—all the way home in the car; and in bed afterwards, very likely." Esther rapped out the disclosure tartly. "And all the while you were——!" Words failed the indignant woman.
"Cried? What, not really? Poor old Judith! What a shame! I must write to her and tell her I'm as jolly as possible."
"Oh, I daresay she's got over it by now," said Esther, with a dig at his vanity. But he accepted the suggestion with a cheerful alacrity which disappointed her malice.
"Of course she has! She's a sensible girl. What's the good of crying?"
"Would you have liked to be asked that at all moments of your life, Arthur?"
He laughed. "Rather a searching question sometimes, isn't it? But poor Judith! I had no idea——" His remorse, though genuine enough, was still tinged with amusement. The smile lurked about his mouth.
Esther's resentment, never very serious, melted away. In the end there was something attractive in his disposition to refuse even a sympathy which was too soft. She thought that she saw change there. Hard knocks had been chipping off a youthful veneer of sentimentality. But she would not have him impute a silly softness to Judith. "And Judith's not a crying woman. I know her," she said.
"I know. She's got no end of courage. That's why it's so queer."
"She thought your heart was broken, you see."
"Yes, but—well, I think she ought to know me better than that."
"Perhaps she doesn't always keep up with you," Esther suggested.
Rather to her surprise he let the suggestion go by, and did not seize the opportunity it offered of considering or discussing himself—his character and its development. Instead, he began to talk about the Marshalship once more, full of interest and pleasure in it, looking forward to the companionship of Sir Christopher, to seeing and learning, to the touches of old pomp and ceremony in which he was to assist, unimportantly indeed, but as a favourably placed spectator.
"I'm more grateful to you than I can say," he declared. "And not for the two guineas a day only!"
His gratitude gave her pleasure, but she could not understand his mood fully. Her nature moved steadily and equably on its own lines; so far as she could remember, it always had, aided thereto by the favouring circumstances of assured position, easy means, and a satisfactory marriage. She did not appreciate the young man's reaction after a long period of emotion and excitement, of engrossment in his personal feelings and fortunes. With these he was, for the moment, surfeited, and disposed, consequently, to turn on them a critical, almost a satiric, eye. The need of his mind now was for calmer interests, more impersonal subjects of observation and thought. He was looking forward to being a spectator, a student of other people's lives, acts, and conditions—he was welcoming the prospect of a period during which his mind would be turned outward towards the world. He had had enough of himself for the time being.
It was not, then, a moment in which he was likely to ask himself very curiously the meaning of Judith's tears, or to find in them much stuff to feed either remorse or vanity. He was touched, he was a little ashamed, though with twitching lips, as he contrasted them with his farewell to Ayesha Layard at approximately the same moment. But on the whole he felt relieved of a matter with which he had little inclination to occupy himself when Esther said, at parting, "I think on the whole you'd better not say anything to Judith about what I told you; she might be angry with me for giving her away."
Judith might well have thought herself betrayed by the disclosure which Esther had made in her irritated curiosity, in her resentful desire to confront the smiling young man with the pathetic picture of a girl in tears. When a woman says to a man, of another woman, "See how fond she is of you!" there is generally implied the reproach, "And you under-rate, you slight, you don't return, her affection." Such a reproach had certainly underlain the contrast Esther drew between Judith's tears and the smiles in which Arthur had presumably indulged during his talk with Ayesha Layard. But Arthur took the contrast lightly; it did not really come home to him; he did not seek to explore its possible meaning, the suggestion contained in it. Lightly too he seemed to have taken Bernadette's telegram—her recollection of him at a crisis of his fortunes, coming out of the silence and darkness in which her flight had wrapped her. Here was a thing which might surely have moved him to emotion, rousing poignant memories? But when Miss Ayesha Layard rather made fun of it, he had not minded! Even this account of what had happened—this faint adumbration of the truth—agreed ill with Esther's previous conception of him.
But it was of a piece with his new mood, with the present turn of his feelings under the stress of fortune. To this mood matters appertaining to women—to use the old phrase, the female interest—did not belong. He was liberated for the time from the attack of that, from his obsession with it, and in his freedom was turning a detached, a critical, eye on his days of bondage. Rather oddly it had been a woman's work, not indeed to bring about his release, but still to mark the moment when he began to be conscious of it; for the turn of the tide of his mind was marked by the moment when, in kissing Ayesha Layard, he forgot his telegram. That little episode satirically mocked the erstwhile devotee and the inconsolable lover, and all the more because it hovered itself pleasantly near the confines of sentiment. It pointedly and recurringly reminded him that there were more women than one in the world, that there were, in fact, a great many. And when a young man's heart is open to the consideration that there are a great many women in the world, it is, for all serious purposes, much the same with him as though there were none.
Esther Norton Ward was not in possession of the full facts, or she might better have understood why Arthur's smile had resisted even the appeal of Judith's tears.
On the last evening before he left London, he dined with Joe Halliday and, with a heart opened by good wine, Joe gave his personal view of the Burlington Theatre disaster.
"I'm sorry I let the Sarradets and Amabel in," he said, "and of course I'm awfully sorry I stuck you for such a lot—though that was a good deal your own doing——"
"It was all my own doing," Arthur protested.
"And I'm sorry for everybody involved, but for myself I don't care much. As long as a fellow's got a dinner inside him and five quid in his pocket, what's there to worry about? I've got lots of other jobs maturing. In fact, as far as I'm personally concerned, perhaps it's rather a good thing we did take such a toss. The fact is, old chap, I was getting most infernally gone on Ayesha."
"I thought you were touched! Well, she's very attractive."
"You're right! If we'd run a hundred nights, I should have been a fair goner! And on the straight too, mind you! Even as it is, I don't mind telling you—as a pal—that I'm hardly my usual bright self since she went to Yankeeland. Keep thinking what's she up to—like a silly ass! Beastly! And what did I get out of it? Nothing!" His voice grew plaintively indignant. "On my word, not so much as that, Arthur!" With the words he put two fingers to his lips and flung a kiss to the empty air.
"That was rather hard lines," Arthur remarked, smiling, pleased to hear that, so far as Joe was concerned at least, Miss Ayesha's promise about her medicine had been handsomely kept.
"Well, I suppose you wouldn't notice it much"—(A veiled allusion to the Romantic and Forsaken Lover!)—"but she's enough to make any man make a fool of himself over her." He heaved a ponderous sigh. "I expect I'm well out of it! She'd never have given me more than a string of beads to play with. And if by a miracle she had succumbed to my charms, I should have been as jealous as a dog every time she went to the theatre! No sound way out of it! All just silly!" He looked up and caught Arthur smiling at him. He burst into a laugh, "Lord, what an ass I am! Come along, old chap! If we get moving, we shall be just in time to see Trixie Kayper at the Amphitheatre. I hear she knocks stars out of High Heaven with her twinkling feet!"
Arthur agreed that the performance was one not to be missed.
The Majesty of the Law—nay, in theory at least, the Majesty of England—sat enthroned at Raylesbury. In the big chair in the centre the Honourable Sir Christopher Lance, in his newly powdered wig and his scarlet robes—the "Red Judge" whose splendour solaces (so it is said) even the prisoners with a sense of their own importance. On his right the High Sheriff, splendid also in Deputy-Lieutenant's uniform, but bored, sleepy after a good lunch, and half-stifled by sitting indoors all day in bad air, instead of agreeably killing something under the open vault of Heaven. Beyond him the Chaplain, smooth-faced, ruddy, rather severe, in gown and cassock of silk so fine and stiff as to seem capable of standing up straight on its own account, even if His Reverence chanced not to be inside. At the end, the Under-Sheriff, unobtrusively ready to come to his Chief's assistance. On his Lordship's left—a sad falling off in impressiveness—Arthur in mufti, and on his other side Mr. Williams, the Judge's clerk, a fat man of constant but noiseless activity, ever coming in and going out, fetching nothing from nowhere and taking it back again (at any rate so far as the casual spectator could perceive). Behind, such county magistrates as were attracted by curiosity or by a laudable desire to take a lesson in doing justice. In front, to right and left, and down below, divided from this august company (for even on Marshal and Clerk fell rays of reflected dignity) the world of struggle—the Bar, the solicitors, jury, witnesses, prisoners, spectators, with great policemen planted at intervals like forest-trees amongst the scrub. For mainspring of the whole machine, the Clerk of Assize, a charming and courtly old gentleman, telling everybody what to do and when to do it, polite, though mostly unintelligible, to the prisoners, confidential and consolatory to the jury, profoundly anxious that nothing should ruffle so much as a hair of his lordship's wig.
In the morning they had tried a yokel for stealing a pig. The defence—a guinea's worth—eloquently advanced and ardently pressed—was that the prosecutor had presented the prisoner with the pig in a moment of conviviality. The prosecutor met the suggestion with amazement, the jury with smiles: one might get drunk, but no man was ever so drunk as to give his pig away! Verdict—Guilty. His Lordship passed a light sentence, faintly smiling over the ways of a world which, after nearly fifty years in the law and eighteen on the Bench, still remained to him rather remote and incomprehensible. This case of the pig was a merry case. It lent itself to jokes, and young Bertie Rackstraw's caricature (he solaced briefless days with art) of counsel for the defence arm-in-arm with a gowned and bewigged pig was circulated and much admired.Pignus amoris, another wag wrote under it.
Now, in the afternoon, a different atmosphere obtained in court. There were no jokes and no caricatures. People were very quiet. Counsel for the prosecution put his searching questions gravely and gently, almost with pitifulness; counsel for the defence was careful, earnest, anxious. Progress was slow, almost every word of the evidence had to go down in the Judge's red book, to be written down in Sir Christopher's neat precise handwriting. A man was on trial for his life and, as afternoon darkened into evening, the battle drew near its fateful issue.
He was a big, burly, stolid, honest-looking fellow, inarticulate, not able to help himself by his answers or to take proper advantage of the dexterous leads given him by his counsel, who strained his right to lead since life was at stake. In truth, though he was sorry that he had killed her—since his old tenderness for her had revived, and moreover he wished he had killed the other man instead—he could not see that he had done wrong. He knew that the law said he had, and drew therefrom a most formidable conclusion; but he did not feel convicted in his own heart. She had deceived him and, when discovered, had derided him with ugly words. Had he slain her then and there in his rage, the plea of manslaughter might well have prevailed. But he said nothing to her; in grim silence he had taken his way to the town and bought the knife, and waited for two days his opportunity; then cunningly laid in wait where she would come alone, and swiftly, in silence again, killed her. But may not rage—ungovernable rage—last two days and be cunning? Round this the battle raged. He had been cunning, calm, methodical.
It was seven o'clock when the Judge finished his summing-up, and the jury retired. His lordship did not leave the court, but listened to an application relating to a civil cause which was to be heard at the next town. Everybody seemed to turn to this matter with relief; and small noises—coughs and fidgetings—began to be audible again. But Mr. Williams rose and went out noiselessly, soon to return. This time he brought something from somewhere, and held it hidden beneath the Bench.
The jury came back, and the little noises were all hushed.
"How say you—Guilty or Not Guilty?"
"Guilty," the foreman answered. "But we wish to recommend him to mercy, my lord, in view of his great provocation."
The prisoner's eyes turned slowly from the foreman to the Judge. Mr. Williams slid what he had brought—the square of black cloth—into the Marshal's hand, and, under the Bench still, the Marshal gave it to the Judge.
The prisoner only shook his head in answer to the Clerk of Assize's question whether he had any reason why the Court should not pronounce sentence, and in due form sentence followed. The Judge delivered it in low and very gentle tones, with a high compassion. "The Jury's recommendation will receive the fullest consideration, but I may not bid you hope for mercy, save for that Mercy for which everyone of us equally must pray."
At the end the condemned man made a little bow to the Court, awkward but not without a pathetic dignity. "Thank you, my lord," he said with respectful simplicity. Then he was led downstairs, and the black square travelled back on its hidden way to Mr. Williams' custody. Mr. Williams stowed it in some invisible place, and issued his summons to all and sundry to attend again at half-past ten on the morrow. The Court rose; the work of the day was ended. It remained only for the Marshal to write to His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, apprising him that Sentence of Death had been passed and that the Judge's notes would be sent to him without delay. His Lordship, the Sheriff, and the Chaplain passed out to the State carriage, attended by the Javelin-men.
"Do you think he's got any chance, my lord?" asked the High Sheriff, as they drove to the Judge's lodgings.
"Yes, Sir Quintin, an off-chance, I should say. In fact I think I shall help him, as far as I can—that's between ourselves, of course. He didn't seem to me a bad sort of man, but—" He smiled faintly—"very primitive! And the poor wretch of a woman certainly didn't let him down easy."
"I should like to have seen the other man in the dock beside him, my lord," said the Chaplain.
"Oh, well, Chaplain, he wasn't bound to anticipate murder, was he? As it is, he's thought it prudent to get out of the country—at some loss and inconvenience, no doubt; this man's friends were after him. But for that we should have had him here to-day."
"He wouldn't have been popular," the High Sheriff opined, with a shake of his glossy head.
Thus, as the days went by, at Raylesbury and the succeeding Assize towns, drama after drama was unfolded, and varieties of character revealed—knaves guileless and knaves quickwitted; fools without balance or self-restraint; mere animals—or such they seemed—doing animal deeds and confronted with a human standard to which they were not equal and which they regarded with a dull dismay. Incidentally there came to light ways of life and modes of thought astonishing, yet plainly accepted and related as things normal; the old hands on the circuit knew all about them and used their knowledge deftly in cross-examination. Now and then the dock was filled by a figure that seemed strange to it, by a denizen of the same world that Bench and Bar, High Sheriff and Marshal inhabited; in one place there was a solicitor who had been town-clerk and embezzled public moneys; in another a local magistrate stood to plead in the dock side by side with a labourer whom he himself had committed for trial; the labourer was acquitted, and the magistrate sent to prison—with nought to seek thence-forward but oblivion. Freaks of destiny and whirligigs of fortune! Yet these were the exception. The salient revelation was of a great world of people to whom there was nothing strange in finding themselves, their relatives or friends, in that dock, to whom it was an accident that might well happen to anybody, an incident in many a career. But they expected the game to be played; they were keen on that, and bitterly resented any sharp practice by the police; a "fair cop," on the other hand, begat no resentment. Lack of consideration as between man and man, however, stirred ire. One fellow's great grievance was that a zealous officer had arrested him at seven o'clock on a Sunday morning. "Why couldn't 'e let me 'ave my Sunday sleep out?" he demanded. "A bloke's not going to do a bunk at seven on a Sunday morning!" His lordship smilingly assured him that he should have seven days less in prison, but he was not appeased. "Seven of a Sunday, my lordship!" he growled still, in disappearing.
"Well, I shouldn't like it myself," said "my lordship" aside to the Marshal.
His lordship's "asides" added something to the Marshal's instruction and more to his amusement. Sir Christopher was not a reformer or a sociologist, nor even an emotionalist either. He took this Assize Court world as he found it, just as he took West-End drawing-rooms as he found them, at other times of the year. He knew the standards. He was never shocked, and nothing made him angry, except cruelty or a Jack-in-office. In presence of these he was coldly dangerous and deadly. To see him take in hand a policeman whose zeal outran the truth was a lesson in the art of flaying a man's skin off him strip by strip. The asides came often then; the artist would have the pupil note his skill and did not disdain his applause. Though the Marshal's share in the work of the court was of the smallest, his lordship liked him to be there, hearing the cases and qualifying himself for a gossip over them, on an afternoon walk or at dinner in the evening.
As the days went by, a pleasant intimacy between the old man and the young established itself, and grew into a mutual affection, quasi-paternal on the one side, almost filial on the other. A bachelor, without near kindred save an elderly maiden sister, the old Judge found in Arthur something of what a son gives his father—a vicarious and yet personal interest in the years to come—and he found amusement in discovering likenesses between himself and his protégé, or at least in speculating on their existence with a playful humour.
"Men differ in the way they look at their professions or businesses," he said. "Of course everybody's got to live, but, going deeper into it than that, you find one man to whom his profession is, first and foremost, a ladder, and another to whom it's a seat in the theatre—if you follow what I mean. That fellow Norton Ward's of the first class. He's never looking about him; his eyes are always turned upwards, towards an inspiring vision of himself at the top. But you and I like looking about us; we're not in a hurry to be always on the upward move. The scene delights us, even though we've no part in it, or only a small one. That's been true about me, and I think it's true about you, Arthur."
"Oh, I've my ambitions, sir," laughed Arthur. "Fits of ambition, anyhow."
"Fits and starts? That's rather it, I fancy. You probably won't go as far as Norton Ward in a professional way, but you may very likely make just as much mark on life really, besides enjoying it more; I mean in a richer broader way. Purely professional success—and I include politics as well as the law, because they're equally a profession to men like our friend—is rather a narrow thing. The man with more interests—the more human man—spreads himself wider and is more felt really; he gets remembered more too."
"The Idle Man's Apologia! Very ingenious!" said Arthur, smiling.
"No, no, you shan't put that on me. It's perfectly true. The greatest characters—I mean characters, not intellects—are by no means generally in the highest places; because, as I say, to climb up there you have to specialise too much. You have to lop off the branches to make the trunk grow. But I don't see you like that. The Burlington Theatre was hardly in the direct line of ascent, was it?"