Later in the evening they went to the theatre together. As they walked up the steps into the entrance hall, Henry saw Lady Cecily standing in a small group of men and women who were talking and laughing very heartily.
"There she is!" he whispered to Gilbert.
"Who is?"
"Lady Cecily!"
"Oh, so she is. Let's find our seats!"
"Perhaps you could catch her eye, Gilbert...."
"Catch my grandmother!" said Gilbert. "Come on!"
But if Gilbert were not willing to catch Lady Cecily's eye, Lady Cecily was very willing to catch his. She saw him walking towards the stalls, and she left her group offriends and went over to him and touched his arm. "Hilloa, Gilbert!" she said, holding her hand out to him. "I thought I should see you here to-night!"
She spoke in louder tones than most women speak, and her voice sounded as if it were full of laughter. There was something in her attitude which stirred Henry, something which vaguely reminded him of a proud animal, stretching its limbs after sleep. Her thick, golden hair, cunningly bound about her head, glistened in the softened light, and he could almost see golden, downy gleams on her cheeks. She held her skirts about her, as she stood in front of Gilbert, and Henry could see her curving breasts rising and falling very gently beneath her silken dress. The odour of some disturbing perfume floated from her.... He moved a step nearer to her, wondering why Gilbert did not smile at her nor show any signs of pleasure at meeting her. It seemed to him to be impossible for any one but the most curmudgeonly of men to behave so ungraciously to so beautiful a woman, or to resist her radiant smiles. She turned to him as he moved towards her, and he saw that her eyes were grey. He heard Gilbert mumbling the introduction.
"So glad!" she said, shaking hands with him. He had expected her to bow to him, and had not been prepared for the offer of her hand. He inwardly cursed his clumsiness as he changed his gesture. "I saw you in the Park with Gilbert this afternoon, didn't I?" she added.
"Yes," he answered, and could say no more. Shyness had fallen on him, and he stood before her, grinning fatuously, and twisting a button on his waistcoat, but unable to speak. "Yes," he said, after a while, "I was with Gilbert in the Park this afternoon!"
"Speak up, you fool!" he was saying to himself. "Here's the loveliest woman you've ever met waiting for you to speak to her, and all you can do is to repeat her phrases as if you were a newly-breeched brat aping its parent. Speak up, you fool!..."
He felt his face turning red and hot. Almost before he knew what he was saying his tongue began to wag, and he heard himself saying, in a stiff, stilted voice, "It was very nice in the Park this afternoon!..."Oh, banal fool, he thought,she will despise you now, as if you were a great, gawky lout....
She turned away from him, and spoke to Gilbert. "I've been at Dulbury," she said, "for six weeks. That's where I got all this brown!..." She laughed and pointed to her cheeks. "I'm so glad to get back. The country bores me stiff. Nothing to see but the scenery. Oh dear!" She almost yawned at her remembrance of the country. "And things are always biting me or stinging me. I'm miserable all the time I'm there!"
"Then why do you go?" said Gilbert.
"Jimphy wanted to go. Jimphy thinks it's his duty to show himself to the tenants now and again. It's the only return he can make, poor dear, for all that rent they pay!"
Gilbert said "Hm!" and then turned to go to the stalls. "It's Jimphy's birthday to-day," she said, and he turned to her again. "That's why we're here to-night. Together, I mean. He's treating me to a box. Come round and talk to us, Gilbert, after the first act ... and you, too, Mr.... Mr!..."
She fumbled over his name. Gilbert, as is the custom in England when introducing people, had spoken the name so indistinctly that she had not heard it.
"Quinn!" he said.
"Of course," she replied. "Mr. Quinn. I'm awfully stupid about names. You'll come, too?"
"I should like to!"
"Do. Gilbert, don't forget. Jimphy's very morose this evening. He's thirty-one to-day, and he thinks that old age is creeping over him!"
"All right," said Gilbert gloomily, and then he and Henry went to their seats.
"Who is Jimphy?" said Henry, as they walked down the stairs into the auditorium.
"Her husband. Didn't you notice something hanging around in the vestibule while we were talking to her?"
"No. There were so many people about!"
"Well, if you had noticed something hanging around, that would have been Jimphy. His real name is Jasper, but Cecily never calls any one by his real name ... except me. She can't think of a name for me!"
They entered the auditorium and stood for a moment looking about the theatre. People were passing quickly into their seats now, and the theatre was full of an eager air, of massed pleasure, and a loud buzz of conversation spread over the stalls from the pit where rows of young women whispered to each other excitedly as this well-known person and that well-known person entered.
"That's 'er, that's 'er!" one girl said in a frenzied whisper to her companion.
"Viola Tree?" the other girl, gazing vacantly into the stalls, replied.
"No, silly! Ellen Terry! Clap, can't you?"
And they clapped their hands as the actress went to her seat.
There was more clapping when Sir Charles Wyndham came in and took his seat.
"Is it Viola Tree?" the girl repeated.
"No, silly. It's Wyndham. Bray-vo! Seventy, if 'e's a day, an' don't look it. My word, I am enjoyin' myself, I can tell you! Everybody's 'ere to-night. Of course, it's St. James's, of course!..."
Popular criminal lawyers came in and sat next to racing marquises; and lords and ladies mingled with actresses who very ostentatiously accompanied their mothers. A few men of letters and a crowd of dramatic critics, depressed, unenthusiastic men, leavened the mass of the semi-great. The rest were the children of Israel.
"Jews to the right of us, Jews to the left of us!..." Gilbert said.
"Anti-Semite!" Henry replied.
"Only in practice, Quinny, not in theory. I'll see you at the interval!"
"If you nip out of your seat as the curtain goes down," said Henry, "we can both get up to her box before the rush!..."
"There won't be any rush."
"Well, anyhow, we can get up to the box pretty quickly!"
Gilbert walked away without replying, and Henry sat back in his seat and watched the boxes so that he might see Lady Cecily the moment she entered. His stall was in the last row, against the first row of the pit, and the girls who had applauded Miss Terry and Sir Charles Wyndham were still identifying the fashionable people.
"I tell you itis'im," said the more assertive of the two.
"I sawr 'is picture in theDaily Reflexionthe time that feller ... wot's 'is name ... the one that 'anged all 'is wives in the coal-cellar ... you know!..."
"I know," the other girl replied. "'Orrible case, I call it!"
"Well, 'e defended 'im. I sawr 'is picture in theDaily Reflexionmyself. Very 'andsome man, eh? They do say!..."
Lady Cecily came into her box, followed by her husband, and Henry looked steadily up at her in the hope that she would see him, but she did not glance in his direction. He could see that she had found Gilbert in the audience, but Gilbert was not looking at her. An odd sensation of jealousy ran through him. He suddenly resented her familiarity with Gilbert. He remembered that she had called him by his Christian name, that she distinguished between him and other men by calling him by his proper name, and not by some fanciful perversion of it. If only she would callhimby his Christian name!...
She was leaning on the edge of the box, and looking about the auditorium.
"That's Lydy Cecily Jyne!" he heard the assertive girl behind him saying.
"'Oo?'"
"Lydy Cecily Jyne.Youknow!"
Her husband leant back in his seat, stifling a yawn as he did so, and Henry saw that he was a faded, insignificant-looking man whose head sloped so sharply that it seemed to be galloping away from his forehead; but he did not pay much attention to him. His eyes were fixed on Lady Cecily.
"A bit 'ot, she is," the girl behind him was saying. "Well, I mean to say!..."
But what she meant to say, Henry neither knew nor cared. The lights in the theatre were lowered, leaving only the bright, warm glow of the footlights on the heavy curtain. He could see Lady Cecily's face still golden and glowing even in the darkness.
"My dear," said the girl behind him, "the things I've 'eard ... well, they'd fill a book!"
Then the curtain went up and the play began.
He saw her leaning forward eagerly to watch the stage, and presently he heard her laughing at some piece of wit in the play: a clear, joyful laugh; and as she laughed, she turned for a few moments and gazed into the darkened theatre. Her beautiful eyes seemed to him to be shining stars, and he imagined that she was looking straight at him. He smiled at her, and then jeered at himself. "Of course, she can't see me," he said.
He tried to interest himself in the traffic of the stage, but his thoughts continually wandered to the woman in the box above him.
"She's the loveliest woman I've ever seen," he said to himself.
She turned to greet them as they entered the box. "Come and sit beside me, Gilbert!" she said. "Mr. Quinn ... oh, you don't know Jimphy, do you?" She introduced Henry to her husband who mumbled "How do!" in a sulky voice, and stood against the wall of the box twisting his moustache. The shyness which had enveloped Henry in the vestibule of the theatre still clung about him, and he felt awkward and tongue-tied. Lord Jasper Jayne did not help Henry to get rid of his shyness. There was a "Who-the-devil-are-you?" look about him that made easy conversation impossible and any conversation difficult. Lady Cecily was chatting to Gilbert as if she had been saving up all her conversation for a month past exclusively for his ears; and Henry could hear a recurrent phrase.... "But, Gilbert, it's ages since you've been to see me, and you know I like you to come!..." that jangled his temper and made him feel savage towards his friend....
He made an effort to be chatty with Lord Jasper. "How do you like the play?" he said, as pleasantly as he could, for it was not easy to be chatty with Lord Jasper, whose coarse, flat features roused a sensation of repulsion in Henry.
"I don't like it," he replied. "Rotten twaddle!"
"Oh!" Henry exclaimed.
There did not appear to be anything more to say, nor did Lord Jasper seem anxious to continue the conversation; but just when it appeared that the effort to be pleasantly chatty was likely to be abortive, Lord Jaspersuddenly walked towards the door of the box. "Come and have a drink!" he said.
Henry did not wish to go and have a drink, and he paused irresolutely until Lady Cecily suddenly leant forward and said with a laugh, "Yes, do go with Jimphy, Mr. Quinn. Gilbert and I have such a lot to say to each other, and Jimphy's not in a good temper. Are you, Jimphy, dear? You see," she went on, "he wanted to go to the Empire, but I made him bring me here!... Do cheer up, Jimphy, dear! Smile for the company!..."
Lord Jasper opened the door of the box and went out, and Henry, raging inwardly, followed him. Before he had quite shut the door again, Lady Cecily had turned to Gilbert. Her hand was on his sleeve, and she was saying, "But Gilbert, darling!..." He shut the door quickly and almost ran after Lord Jasper. She was in love with Gilbert, and Gilbert was in love with her. A woman would not put her hand so affectionately on a man's arm and call him "Gilbert, darling!" if she were not in love with him. She had wished to be alone with Gilbert ... had practically turned him out of the box so that she might be alone with Gilbert ... had not waited for him to close the door before she began to fondle him ... and Gilbert had spoken so bitterly of her!...
He followed on the heels of Lord Jasper, passing through a throng of men in the passages and on the stairs, until he reached the bar. "Whisky and soda?" said Lord Jasper, and Henry nodded his head.
"I hate theatres," Lord Jasper said.
"Oh!" Henry replied.
That seemed to be the only adequate retort to make to anything that Jimphy said.
"Yes, I can't stand 'em. Cecily let me in to-night ... on a chap's birthday, too. She might have chosen the Empire!"
"You like music-halls then?"
"They're all right. Better than theatres anyhow. I like to see girls dancing and ... and ... all that kind of thing!"
A bell rang, warning them that the second act was about to begin.
"I suppose we ought to go back," said Henry, putting his glass down. He had barely touched the whisky and soda.
"No hurry," Lord Jasper replied. "No hurry. And you haven't drunk your whisky? Cecily's quite happy with that chap, Farlow.... I don't like him myself ... oh, I say, he's a pal of yours, isn't he? Well, it doesn't matter now. I don't like him, and he doesn't like me. I know he doesn't. I can always tell a chap doesn't like me because I generally don't like him. Have another, will you?"
Henry shook his head.
"I think we ought to be getting back," he said, "I hate disturbing people after the curtain's gone up!"
"You don't want to see that rotten play, do you? Look here ... I've forgotten your name! Sorry!..."
"Quinn. Henry Quinn!"
"Oh, Quinn! You're not English, are you?"
"I'm Irish."
"Are you? That's damn funny! Well, anyhow, what I was going to say was this. You don't want to see this rotten play, do you?"
"I do rather!..."
"No, you don't, Quinn. No, you don't. And I don't want to see it, either. Very well, then, what's to prevent you and me going to the Empire together, eh? We can come back for Cecily!..."
Henry stared at Lord Jasper. "But we can't do that," he protested.
"Oh, yes we can. Cecily won't mind. She'll be glad. We'll go and tell her ... and look here, Quinn, I'll introduce you to a girl I know ... very nice girl ... perfect lady ... lives with her mother as a matter of fact ... Eh?"
"I'd much rather see the play!"
"Oh, all right," Lord Jasper said sulkily. "All right!"
Henry moved towards the door of the bar, but Lord Jasper made no attempt to follow him. "Aren't you coming?" he said, pausing at the door.
"No," Lord Jasper replied. "I don't want to see the damn play. I shall have another drink, and then I shall go to the Empire by myself. You better go back to Cecily and ... and that chap Farlow. She won't notice I'm not there!"
"You'd better come and tell her yourself, hadn't you?" Henry said.
Lord Jasper deliberated with himself for a few moments.
"All right," he said. "I will. I'll come presently. You tell her, will you, that I'll come presently. P'raps you'll change your mind, Quinn, and come with me to the Empire after you've had another dose of this damn play. A chap doesn't want to see a play on a chap's birthday!..."
It occurred to Henry that Lord Jasper Jayne was slightly drunk. He had swallowed the second whisky and soda rather more expeditiously than he had swallowed the first, and no doubt he had dined well. There was a bleary look in his eyes that signified a heated brain....
"My God," Henry said to himself, "that beautiful woman married to this ... this swine!"
"I'm thirty-one to-day, ole f'la," Lord Jasper continued, coming over to Henry and taking hold of his arm. "Thirty-one. I'm getting on in years, ole f'la, that's what I'm doing ... sere and yellow, so to speak ... and a chap my age doesn't want to be bothered with a damn play. He wants something ... something substansl!..." He fumbled over the word "substantial" and then fell on it."Something substansl," he repeated. "Now, if you come with me!..."
"I say, you mustn't talk so loudly," Henry warned him. "The curtain's gone up, and you'll disturb people...."
"All right, ole f'la, all right. I won't say another word!"
They stumbled along the passages to the door of the box, and entered as quietly as they could.
"We thought you'd got lost," said Lady Cecily, smiling at Henry.
"No ... no," he replied, "we didn't get lost!"
Gilbert was sitting in the seat where Jimphy had sat earlier in the evening. "Gilbert is going to stay here," said Lady Cecily. "Won't you stay, too, Mr. Quinn!"
"Won't I be crowding you?..." he said.
"Oh, no," she replied. "Jimphy doesn't want to see the play anyhow, and he'll be quite happy if he has some one to talk to in the bar between the acts!..."
He felt the blood rushing violently to his head, and in his anger he almost got up and walked out of the box. That she should use him to keep her sottish husband entertained while she made love to Gilbert, filled him with a sensation that came near to hatred of her. Gilbert had not spoken since they returned to the box, but it was clear from his manner that there had been love-making.... He crushed down his anger, and stood behind Lady Cecily while the play went on. Her bare shoulders had a soft, warm look, in the subdued light ... he was conscious of beautifully shaped ears nestling in golden hair ... and the anger in him began to die. Once she moved slightly in her seat, and looked round as if she wanted to speak. He leant over her.
"Do you want anything?" he asked.
"My wrap," she said.
He picked up the flimsy wrap and put it about her shoulders, and she turned to him and smiled and said, "Thank you!" and instantly all the anger in him perished. He had admired her before, admired her ardently, but now he knew that he loved her, must love her always....
There was a sound of heavy breathing, and he turned to look at Jimphy.
"Wake him up," said Lady Cecily in a whisper. "Poor dear, he always goes to sleep when he's annoyed!"
He tiptoed across the box and shook the sleeper's arm.
"Eh? What is it?" Lord Jasper said, as he opened his eyes and gaped about him, and then, as he became conscious of his surroundings, he said, "Is it over yet?"
"No. The second act isn't finished yet!"
"Oh, Lord!" he groaned.
"It'll be over in a few minutes!"
"Thank God! I can't stick plays ... not this sort anyhow. I don't mind a musical comedy now and again, although I think you can have too much of that...."
Lady Cecily turned and waved her hand at her husband. "Ssh, Jimphy!" she whispered. "You're making a frightful row!"
The second act ended soon afterwards, and Lord Jasper scrambled to his feet ... he had been sitting on the ground at the back of the box, yawning and yawning ... and made for the door. "Come and have a drink, Quinn!" he said.
"No, thanks," Henry replied.
"Come on. Be a sport!"
"Do go with him, Mr. Quinn, please," Lady Cecily said. "He's sure to get lost or troublesome or something. Aren't you, Jimphy dear?"
"Aren't I what!"
"Aren't you sure to get lost or troublesome or something!"
Lord Jasper did not reply to his wife. "Come along,Quinn!" he said. "Cecily thinks she's being comic!..."
Henry hesitated for a moment or two. He did not wish to go to the bar, and he was sick of the sight of Lord Jasper. He wished very much to stay with Lady Cecily, and he felt hurt because she had urged him to accompany her husband. He would have to do as she had asked him, of course.... While he hesitated, Gilbert got up quickly from his seat and went to the door of the box. "I'll come with you, Jimphy!" he said, and then, almost pushing Lord Jasper in front of him, he went out, closing the door of the box behind him. Henry stared at the door for a second or two, nonplussed by the swiftness of Gilbert's action, and then he turned to Lady Cecily. A look of vexation on her face instantly disappeared and she smiled at Henry.
"Come and sit here," she said, "and tell me all about yourself. I haven't really got to know you, have I? Gilbert says you're Irish!"
"Yes," he answered, sitting down.
"How jolly!" she said.
"Do you think so?"
"Oh, yes. It's supposed to be awfully jolly to be Irish. All the Irish people in books seem to be very amused about something. I suppose it's the climate. They say there's a great deal of rain in Ireland...."
"Yes," he answered vaguely, "there is some sometimes!"
She questioned him about Gilbert and Ninian Graham and Roger Carey.
"It must be awfully jolly," she said, "to be living together like that, you four men!"
He noticed that Lady Cecily always spoke of things being "awfully jolly" and wondered why her vocabulary should be so limited in its expressions of pleasure.
"We get on very well together," he replied, "and it's very lively at times. Gilbert's very lively...."
"Is he?" she said. "He always seems so ... so ... well, not lively. I don't mean that he's solemn or pompous, but he's so ... so anxious to have his own way, if you understand me. Now, I'm not like that!" She broke off and laughed. "Oh, I don't quite mean that. I am selfish. I know I am. I love having my own way, but if I can't have a thing just as I want it ... well, I'm content to have it in the way that I can. Now, do you understand?"
Henry nodded his head.
"Gilbert isn't like me," she continued. "He says to himself, 'I must have this thing exactly in this way. If I can't have it exactly in this way, then I won't have it at all!' and it's so silly of him to behave like that!"
Henry looked up at her in a puzzled fashion. "What is it he wants?... I beg your pardon, I'm being impertinent!"
"Oh, no!" she replied, smiling graciously at him. "He wants ... oh, he wants everything like that. Haven't you noticed?"
"No," Henry answered, "I haven't."
"Well, you will some day. My motto is, Take what you can get in the way you can get it. It's so much easier to live if you act on that principle!"
"Gilbert's an artist, Lady Cecily, and he can't act on that principle. No artist can. He takes what he wants in the way that he wants it or else he will not take it at all!"
"Exactly. That's what I've been saying. And it's so silly. But never mind. He's young yet, and he'll learn!"
She turned to gaze at the audience, and Henry, not knowing what else to do and having no more to say, looked too. He could think of plenty of fine things to say to her, but he could not get them on to his tongue. He wanted to tell her that he had scarcely heard a word of what was said in the first act of the play because he had filled his mind with thoughts of her, and had spent most of the time in gazing up at her as she sat leaning on the ledge of her box; but when he tried to speak, his mouth seemed to be parched and his tongue would not move.
"Do you like this play?" she asked.
"No," he replied.
"Why? I thought everybody admired Wilde's wit. It's clever, isn't it?"
"I don't like it!"
"But it's supposed to be awfully clever!" she insisted.
"It's a common melodrama with bits of wit and epigram stuck on to it!" Henry answered.
"Oh, really!"
"The wit isn't natural ... it doesn't grow naturally out of the life of the play, I mean. It's stuck on like ... like plaster images on the front of a house. The witty speeches aren't spontaneous ... they don't come inevitably!... I'm afraid I'm not making myself very clear, but anyhow, I don't like the play. I don't like anything Wilde wrote, except 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol,' and even that's not true. That's really why I dislike his work. It isn't true, any of it. It's all lies...."
"How awfully interesting!"
"Do you know 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'? he asked.
"No.... Oh, yes! I have read it. Of course, I have. Somebody lent it to me or I bought it or something.... Anyhow, I have read it, but I can't remember...."
"Do you remember the lines?...
For all men kill the thing they love,But all men do not die."
"I seem to remember something ..." she said vaguely.
"Well, that's a lie. All men don't kill the thing they love. Wilde couldn't help lying even when he was most sincere!"
"That's awfully interesting," Lady Cecily said. "Do you know I've never thought of that before. Won't you come and see me one afternoon, Mr. Quinn?"
"I should like to," he said, and as he spoke, the door of the box opened and Gilbert entered, followed by Lord Jasper.
Lady Cecily turned eagerly to Gilbert. "Oh, Gilbert," she said, "Mr. Quinn promised to come and see me one afternoon. You'll bring him, won't you? Come on Wednesday, both of you!"
"I should like to," Henry murmured again.
"I don't think I can come on Wednesday," Gilbert said.
"Oh, yes, you can," Lady Cecily exclaimed, "and if you can't, you can come some other day. You'll come, Mr. Quinn, won't you?"
"Yes, Lady Cecily!..."
"And.... Jimphy, dear, do be nice and ask them to come to supper with us after the play. We're going to the Savoy afterwards. I thought it would please Jimphy to go there because he'd be sure not to like the play...."
"Yes, you come along, you chaps!" Jimphy said, willingly.
"I can't. I'm sorry," Gilbert replied. "I've got to go down to Fleet Street and write a notice of this play!"
"Can't you put it off for once, Gilbert!" Lady Cecily said.
Gilbert laughed. "I should like to see Dilton's face if I were to do that...."
"Dilton! Dilton!! Who is Dilton?" she demanded.
"My editor. Very devoted to the human note, Dilton is. No, Cecily, I'm sorry, but I must go down to Fleet Street. Henry can go with you."
She paused for a moment, and then said, "How long will it take you to write the notice of the play?" she asked, adding before he could answer, "Can't you do it now?"
"Yes, Gilbert," Henry said, "you can do it now. You know the play, and you've seen the acting in two acts...."
Gilbert looked at him very directly, and when he spoke, his voice was very firm. "No," he said, "I must go down to Fleet Street!"
Lady Cecily was cross and hurt, and she turned away pettishly.
"Oh, very well!" she said shortly.
There was a slight air of restraint among them ... even Lord Jasper seemed to feel it. It was he who spoke next.
"You can come and join us at the Savoy after you've done your ... whatyoumaycallit, can't you?" he said.
Gilbert paused for a moment. He looked as if he were undecided as to what he should say. Then he said, "Yes, I can do that ... if I get away from the office in time!"
Henry was about to say, "Why, of course, you can get away in plenty of time!" but he checked himself and did not say it.
"Oh, that will do excellently," said Lady Cecily, all smiles again.
Then the lights of the theatre were lowered and the third act began.
When the play was over, they drove to Fleet Street in Lord Jasper's motor-car. Lady Cecily had suggested that they should take Gilbert to his newspaper office in order to save time, and he had consented readily enough.
"We might wait for you!..." she added, but Gilbert would not agree to this proposal. "It isn't fair to keep Jimphy from his birthday treat any longer," he said, "and I may be some time before I'm ready!"
She was sitting next to Gilbert, and Henry and Jimphy were together with their backs to the chauffeur. She did not appear to be tired nor had the sparkle of her beautiful eyes diminished. She lay against the padded back of the car and chattered in an inconsequent fashion that was oddly amusing. She did not listen to replies that were made to her questions, nor did she appear to notice that sometimes replies were not made. It seemed to Henry that she would have chattered exactly as she was now chattering if she hadbeen alone. Neither Gilbert nor Jimphy answered her, but Henry felt that something ought to be said when she made a direct remark.
"Isn't Fleet Street funny at this time of night?" she said. "So quiet. I do hope the supper will be fit to eat. Oh, Gilbert, I wish you'd say something in your notice of Wilde's play about his insincerity. I felt all the time I was listening to the play that ... that it wasn't true!'"
Gilbert sat up straight in his seat and looked at her.
"Oh!" he exclaimed.
"Yes," she went on. "The wit seemed to be stuck on to the play ... it wasn't part of it!..."
Gilbert leant back in his seat again. "You've been talking to Henry about Wilde, haven't you?"
She laughed lightly and turned towards Henry. "Oh, of course. Mr. Quinn, I always repeat what other people say. I forget that they've said it to me and think that I've thought of it myself!"
Henry professed to be pleased that she had accepted his ideas so completely.
"But, of course," she continued, "what you said was quite true. I've always felt that there was something wrong with Wilde's plays...."
"I can't think what you all want to talk about a play for. I never see anything in 'em to talk about!" Jimphy murmured sleepily.
"Go to sleep, Jimphy, dear. Well wake you when we get to the Savoy...."
"Always ragging a chap!" Jimphy muttered, and then closed his eyes.
The car turned down one of the narrow streets that lead from Fleet Street to the Thames Embankment, and then turned again and stopped.
"Oh, is this your office, Gilbert?" Lady Cecily said. "Such an ugly, dark looking place! But I suppose it's interesting inside? Newspaper offices are supposed to be awfully interesting inside, aren't they?"
"Are they?" Gilbert replied, as he got out of the car. "I've never noticed it. Noisy holes where no one has time to think. Good-bye."
"Not 'good-bye,' Gilbert! We shall see you soon at the Savoy, shan't we?"
"Oh, yes. Yes. I'd almost forgotten that!"
The car drove off, threading the narrow steep street slowly. They could hear the deep rurr-rurr of the printing machines coming from the basements of the buildings, and now and then great patches of pallid blue light shot out of open windows. Motor-vans and horse-waggons were drawn up against the pavements in front of the office-doors, waiting for the newly-printed papers. Bundles ofDaily Reflexionswere already printed and were being thrown on to the cars and waggons for distribution.
"Are they printed already?" Lady Cecily said.
"Most of them were printed at nine o'clock," Henry replied. "The ha'penny illustrated papers go all over the country before the ordinary papers are printed at all!"
"How awfully clever of them!" she said.
The car turned into Fleet Street and quickly drove up to the Savoy.
"Thank God!" said Jimphy. "I shall get some fun out of my birthday now!"
"Jimphy loves his food," Lady Cecily exclaimed. "Don't you, Jimphy? Don't you love your little tum-tum?..."
They entered the hotel and found the table which had been reserved for them. There was a queer, hectic gaiety about the place, as if every one present were making a desperate effort to eat, drinkandbe merry. People greeted Lady Cecily as she passed them and muttered, "'loa, Jimphy!" Henry had never been to a fashionable restaurant before, and the barbaric beauty of the scene fascinated him. The women were riotously dressed, and the colours of their garments mingled and merged like the colours of a sunset. There was a constant flow of peoplethrough the room, and the chatter of animated voices and bursts of laughter and the jingling, sentimental music played by the orchestra made Jimphy forget how bored he had been at the theatre. The slightly fuddled air which he had had in the bar of St. James's had left him and he began to talk.
"Ripping woman, that!" he said to Henry, indicating a slight, dark girl who had entered the restaurant in company with a tall, flaxen-haired man. "Pretty little flapper, I call her! I like thin women, myself. Well, slender's a better word, isn't it? What you say, Cecily?"
Lady Cecily had tapped her husband's arm. "Ernest Lensley's just come in," she said. "He's with Boltt. Go and bring them both here. They can't find seats, poor dears!"
Ernest Lensley and Boltt were fashionable novelists. Lensley was an impudent-looking man with very blue eyes who had written a number of popular stories about society women who "chattered" very much in the way that Lady Cecily chattered. The heroine of his best-known book was modelled, so people said, on the wife of a Cabinet Minister, and thousands of suburban Englishwomen professed to have an intimate knowledge of the statesman's family life solely because they had read Lensley's novel. It was a flippant, vulgar book, the outcome of a flippant, vulgar mind. Boltt had a wider public than Lensley. Boltt, a tall, thin, stooping man, with peering eyes, had discovered "the human note" of which Gilbert's editor prated continually. He was a precise, priggish man, extraordinarily vain though no vainer than Lensley, who, however, had an easy manner that Boltt would never acquire. He spoke in the way in which one might expect a "reduced gentlewoman, poor dear!" to speak, and there was something about him that made a man long to kick him up a room and down a room and across a room and back again. His heroes were all big, burly, red-haired giants, who wore beards and old clothes and said "By God, yes!" when theyadmired the scenery, and led a vagabond life in a perfectly gentlemanly manner until they met the heroine.... His heroines constantly fell into situations which were extremely compromising in the eyes of a censorious world, but they were never completely compromised. The whole world knew, before the conclusion of the story, that the heroine had been falsely suspected. If she had spent the night in the hero's bedroom, she had done so with the best intentions, under the strictest chaperonage ... usually that of her dear, devoted old nurse, God bless her!... whose presence in the bedroom had been hidden, until the middle of the penultimate chapter, from the heroine's friends and relatives. The hero, of course, poor, manly, broken giant, had been ill, suffering from a fever, and in his delirium had called for her, discontent until she had put her cool firm hand upon his hot brow, and the doctor had said that if she would stay with him, she would save his life. So she had flung her reputation to the winds and had hurried to his bedroom.... It was pretentious, flatulent stuff, through which a thin stream of tepid lust trickled so gently that it seemed like a stream of pretty sentiment, and it was written with such cleverness that young ladies in Bath and Cheltenham and Atlantic City, U.S.A., were tricked into believing that this was Life ... Real Life....
Lensley and Boltt followed Jimphy eagerly to Lady Cecily's table. Lensley was glad to sit with her: Boltt was glad to be certain of his supper. Lensley enjoyed listening to Cecily's babble because he could always be certain of getting something out of her speech that would just fit into his next novel: Boltt liked his contiguity to members of the governing class. They completely ignored Henry after they had been introduced to him.
"Mr. Quinn is writing a novel, too!" said Lady Cecily.
"Oh, yes!" said Lensley.
"Indeed!" Boltt burbled.
Thereafter they addressed themselves exclusively to LadyCecily and her husband. Lensley told Lady Cecily that she was to be the heroine of his next book. "I'm studying you now, dear Lady Cecily!" he said. "Jotting you down in my little book ... all your little plaguey ways and speeches!..."
"How awfully exciting!" she replied, and her eyes seemed to become brighter, and she leant towards the novelist as if she meant to reveal herself more clearly to him.
"You'll be angry with me when you see the book," he said. "Dreadfully angry. You know poor Mrs. Maldon was very hurt about 'Jennifer'!" Mrs. Maldon was the wife of the Cabinet Minister.
"I shan't mind what you say about me," Lady Cecily said, "so long as you make me the heroine of the book. What are you going to call it?..."
"The Delectable Lady!"
"How awfully nice!..."
Henry began to feel bored. He wished that Gilbert would come. Gilbert would soon rout this paltry little tuppenny-ha'penny Society novelist with his pretty-pretty chatter and his pretty-pretty blue eyes and his air of being a knowing dog. Lady Cecily seemed to have forgotten Henry altogether.... He turned to Lord Jasper who was trying hard not to yawn in Mr. Boltt's face. Mr. Boltt had been a surveyor at one period of his life, and his favourite theme of conversation was Renascence architecture. He was now telling Jimphy of the glories of French Cathedrals, and Jimphy, who cared even less for French Cathedrals than he cared for English ones, was wondering just how he could change the conversation to a discussion of the latest ballet at the Empire and particularly of a girl he knew who was a perfect lady and, as a matter of fact, lived with her mother. The supper partyseemed likely to end dismally, and Henry, when he was not wishing that Gilbert would come, was wishing that he himself had not come. He could not understand why it was that he had so much difficulty in talking easily with strangers. Lensley was prattling as if he were determined to discharge an entire novelful of "chatter" at Lady Cecily, and Boltt's little clipped, pedantic voice recited a long rigmarole about a glorious view in France which he had lately seen while motoring in that country. Boltt admired Nature in the way in which any man of careful upbringing would admire a really nice woman....
Henry had lately reviewed a book by Boltt for a daily paper, and he had expressed scorn for it and its stuffed dummies, masquerading as men and women ... and Boltt, who took himself very seriously indeed, had written a letter of complaint to the editor of the paper. Henry wondered what Boltt would say if he knew that the review had been written by him, and an imp in him made him interrupt the long recital of the glories of France.
"TheMorning Reporthad a good go at your last novel, Boltt!" he said.
The novelist looked reproachfully at Henry, as if he were rebuking him for indelicacy.
"I never see theMorning Report," he replied loftily.
"Oh, then, I suppose you didn't see the review. I thought you probably got clippings from a Press-cuttings agency!..."
"Yes, oh, yes, I do. I seem to remember that theMorning Reportwas unkind. Not quite fair, I should say!"
Lord Jasper began to take an intelligent interest in the conversation. "Have you published another book, Boltt?" he asked innocently.
"Yes ... a ... Lord Jasper ... I have!" Mr. Boltt said, and there was some sniffiness in his tones. He was accustomed to lengthy reviews on the day of publication, and it annoyed him to think that there was some one inthe world, some one, too, with whom he was acquainted, who did not know that the publication of one of his books was an event.
"I can't think how you writing chaps keep it up," said Jimphy. "I couldn't write a book to save my life!..."
"No?" said Mr. Boltt, smiling in the way of one who says to himself, "God help you, my poor fellow, God help you!"
"I suppose it's all a question of knack," Jimphy continued. "You get into the way of it and you can't stop. Sometimes a tune gets into my head and I have to keep on humming it or whistling it. I'm not what you'd call a sentimental fellow at all, but that song ... you know, about the honeysuckle and the bee ... Icould notget that song out of my head. I thought I should go cracked over it. Always humming it or whistling it ... and I suppose if you get an idea for a yarn into your head, Boltt, well, it's something like that!"
Lady Cecily had exhausted the "chatter" of Mr. Lensley.
"What's that!" she exclaimed.
"Lord Jasper is describing the processes of literature to me, Lady Cecily," said Mr. Boltt sarcastically. "I have been greatly interested."
The man's conceit irritated Henry and he longed to disconcert him.
"Yes," he said. "It all began by my saying something about a review of Boltt's last novel in theMorning Report!..."
Mr. Boltt made motions with his hands. "Really," he said, "Lady Cecily isn't in the least interested in my effusions."
"Oh, but I am, Mr. Boltt," Lady Cecily interrupted. "What did the paper say? I'm sure it was very flattering!..."
"The reviewer said that the book would probably pleasethe vicar's only daughter, but that it wouldn't impose upon her when she grew up...."
"Oh!" said Lady Cecily.
"Some rival, I'm afraid!" Mr. Boltt murmured. "Some one who dislikes me...."
"The chief complaint was that your people aren't real...." Henry continued, though Mr. Boltt frowned heavily.
"Yes. I don't think we need discuss the matter further, Mr...."
"Quinn!!" said Henry.
He felt happier now that he had pricked the egregious fellow's vanity.
"Silly of 'em to say that," said Lord Jasper. "Boltt sells a tremendous number of books, don't you, Boltt? More than Lensley does. And that shows, doesn't it? If a chap can sell as many books as Boltt sells ... well, he must be some good. I've never read any of 'em, of course, but then I'm not a chap that reads much. All the same, a chap I know says Boltt's all right, and he's a chap that knows what he's talking about. I mean to say, he's written books himself!"
Lady Cecily was no longer interested in the history of Mr. Boltt's novel. The meal was almost at an end, and Gilbert had not arrived. She glanced towards the door, looking straight over Mr. Lensley's head, and Henry could see that she was fidgeting.
"Gilbert's a long time," he said to her.
She did not answer, and before he could repeat his remark to her, Lord Jasper exclaimed, "I say, you know, we ought to be getting home, Cecily. It's getting jolly late!..."
"Let's wait a little longer," she said, "Gilbert hasn't come yet!"
"But I mean to say, this place'll be closing soon...." Mr. Boltt made a satirical remark on the ridiculouslyearly hours at which restaurants are compelled by law to close in England. In France, he said ... but Lord Jasper did not wait to hear what is done in France.
"He won't come now," he said. "He wouldn't have time to eat any supper if he were to come ... and it's getting jolly late, and I'm jolly tired!"
He got up from the table as he spoke. "Very well," said Lady Cecily, rising too.
The others followed her example, and Boltt and Lensley prepared to escort Lady Cecily to the door, but she gave her hand to them and said "Good-night!"
"It's so nice to have seen you both," she said. "No, don't trouble. Mr. Quinn will come with me!"
Lord Jasper had gone on in front to find his car, and Lady Cecily and Henry walked down the room together until they came to the courtyard where the car was waiting for them.
"Tell Gilbert I'm angry with him," she said. "He must come and see me soon and tell me how sorry he is. You'll come, too, perhaps, Mr. Quinn!"
He found his tongue suddenly. "I will, Lady Cecily," he said. "I'll come even if he doesn't. I've enjoyed to-night tremendously...."
"Have you, Mr. Quinn?"
"Yes...."
"I say, come along," Lord Jasper shouted to them.
"Poor Jimphy's getting fractious. You can tell me how much you've enjoyed to-night when we meet again!"
He took her to the car, and watched her as she gathered her skirts about her and climbed inside.
"Can't we drop you at your house!" said Lord Jasper. "It won't be any trouble to do so!"
"No, thanks," Henry replied. "I'd rather walk home. It's such a beautiful night!"
Lord Jasper followed Lady Cecily into the car. "You're a romantic chap, Quinn!" he said, and then, as an afterthought, he added quickly, "I say, we must arrange to goto the Empire together some evening. You're the sort of chap I like...."
Lady Cecily waved her hand to him. As the car moved off he saw her beautiful face leaning against the side of the car, and he longed to take her in his arms and kiss her. Then the car turned, and drove quickly off. He stood for a moment or two looking after it, and continued to stand still even when it had swung out of the courtyard into the Strand. Then he walked slowly away from the restaurant. He had not gone very far when his arm was touched, and, turning round, he saw Gilbert.
"Hilloa," he said, "you're late!"
"No, I'm not," Gilbert replied.
"Yes, you are. The Jaynes have gone!"
"I saw them going. I've been here for over half-an-hour, waiting for you!"
"Over half-an-hour! What's up, Gilbert?"
Gilbert put his arm in Henry's and made him move out of the Savoy courtyard. "Come down to the Embankment," he said. "It's quieter there. I want to talk to you!"
"But hadn't we better go home? We can talk on the way. It's late...."
"No. I want to go to the Embankment. Damn it all, Quinny, it's a sentimental place for a heart-to-heart talk, isn't it?"
"You aren't drunk, Gilbert, I suppose?"
"Never so sober in my life, Quinny. Besides, I don't get drunk. People who talk about beer and whisky as much as I do, never get drunk. Come along, there's a good chap!"
"Very well ... only I'm not going to stay long. I'm no good for work the day after I've had a long night...."
"I won't keep you long. How did the supper-party go off?"
"Damnably. Two tame novelists turned up ... Boltt and Lensley!"
"Those asses!"
"Yes. Lensley 'chattered' to Lady Cecily, and Boltt bored and bored and bored.... I took him down a bit. I rubbed in theMorning Reportreview. The little toad could hardly sit still! Of course, he affected the superior person attitude!"
"God be merciful to him, poor little rat! He wants to be a wicked, hell-for-leather fellow, but he hasn't got the stomach for it! What did Cecily say when I didn't turn up?"
"She looked rather cross. She told me as we came away to tell you she was angry with you. You're to go and apologise to her as soon as possible!"
"Did she?"
"Yes. I say, Gilbert, why didn't you turn up?"
They had reached the Embankment, and they crossed to the riverside and leant against the parapet.
"Because I was afraid to," said Gilbert.
"Afraid to!"
"Yes. Can't you see I'm in love with her?"
"Well, I guessed as much...."
"I love her so much that she can do what she likes with me, and all she likes to do is to destroy me!"
"Destroy you!"
"Yes. If you love Cecily, she demands the whole of your life. Every bit of it. She consumes you.... Oh, I know this sounds like a penny dreadful, Quinny, but it's true. I've asked her to run away with me, but she won't come. She says she hates scandal and she likes her social position. My God, I feel sick when I see Jimphy with her ... like a damned big lobster putting his ... his claws about her. He isn't a bad fellow in his silly way, but I can't stand him as Cecily's husband!"
"I know what you mean," said Henry.
"I thought that if Cecily and I were to go away together, we could get our lives into some sort of perspective, and then I could go on with my work and have her as well, but she won't go away with me. She wants me to hang around, being her lover ... and I can't do that, Quinny. It's mean and furtive, and I hate that. You're always listening for some one coming ... a servant or the husband or some one ... and I can't stand that. If I love a woman, I love her, and I don't want to spend part of my life in pretending that I don't. I loathe myself when I have to change the talk suddenly or move away when a door opens.... Do you understand, Quinny?"
Henry nodded his head, but did not speak.
"Once when I'd been begging Cecily to go away with me, Jimphy walked into the room ... and I had to pretend to be talking about some nasturtiums that Cecily had grown. I felt like a cad. That's what's rotten about loving another man's wife. It's the treachery of the thing, the pretending.... I've often wondered why it is that love of that sort seems so romantic and splendid in books and so damnably mean when it comes into the Divorce Court ... but when I met Cecily I knew why ... it's because of the treachery and the deceit. I used to think that it was beautiful in books because artists were able to see the hidden beauty, and ugly in the Divorce Court because ordinary people only saw the surface things ... but I'm not sure now."
He stopped speaking, but Henry did not speak instead. He did not know what to say; he felt indeed that there was nothing to be said, that he must simply listen. He watched the electric signs on the other side of the river as they spelt out the virtues of Someone's Teas and Another's Whisky, and wondered how long it would be before Gilbert said something else. He was beginning to be bored by the business, and he felt sleepy. He was jealous too, whenhe thought that Gilbert had kissed Cecily and had been held in her beautiful arms....
"Cecily doesn't mind about the shabbiness of it," he heard Gilbert saying. "We've talked about that, and she says it doesn't matter a bit. All that matters to her is that she shan't be found out ... too publicly anyhow! She called me a prig when I said that I was afraid of tainting my work...."
"Tainting your work?"
"Yes. Perhaps it is priggish of me, but I feel that if I'm mean in one thing I may be mean in another. I'm terribly afraid of doing bad work, Quinny, and I got an idea into my head that if I let taint into my life in one place, I couldn't confine it and it would spread to other places. Do you see? If I let myself get into a rotten position with Cecily, I might write down...."
"I don't see that," said Henry. "Because you love a married woman, it doesn't follow that you'll pot-boil."
"No, perhaps not. But I was afraid of it. I suppose it was priggish of me. That wasn't the only thing, however. I knew that if I did what Cecily wanted me to do, I'd spend most of my time with her or thinking about her. I can't work if I'm doing that, for I think of her and long for her.... Oh, let's go home. It isn't fair to keep you here listening to my twaddle!"
But they did not move. They gazed down on the swiftly-flowing river, and presently they heard Big Ben striking one deep note.
"One o'clock!" said Gilbert.
"What are you going to do about it, Gilbert?" Henry asked at last.
"I'm going away from London. I've chucked my job on theDaily Echo...."
"Good Lord, man, what for?"
"Well, I'm fed-up with the English theatre to begin with, and I'm fed-up with journalism too ... and it's the only way I can get free of Cecily. I must finish thenew comedy and I can't finish it if I stay in town and see Cecily. She won't let me finish it. She'll make me go here and go there with her. Shell keep me making love to her when I ought to be working. God damn women, Quinny!"
"You're excited, Gilbert!"
"Yes, I know I am. When I'm with Cecily, I'm like a jelly-fish. She sucks the brains out of me. She doesn't care whether I finish my comedy or not. She doesn't care what happens to my work so long as I hang around and love her and kiss her whenever she wants me to. My brains go to bits when I'm with her. I'm all emotion and sensation ... just like those asses Lensley and Boltt. Quinny, fancy spending your life turning out the sort of stuff those two men write. They've written about a dozen books each, and I suppose they're good for twenty or thirty more. I'd rather be a scavenger!"
They walked along the Embankment towards Waterloo Bridge.
"I'm going to Anglesey," Gilbert said. "I shall go and stay there until the end of the summer!"
"I shall miss you, Gilbert. So will Ninian and Roger!"
"I shall miss you three, but it can't be helped. I'm the sort of man who succumbs to women ... I can't help it. If they're beautiful and soft and full of love ... like Cecily ... they down me. Their femininity topples me over, and there's no work to be got out of me while I'm like that. But my work's of more consequence to me than loving and kissing, Quinny, and if I can't do it while I'm Cecily's lover, then I'll go away from her and do it!"
"What makes you think you could do it if she were to go away with you?"
"I don't know. Hope, I suppose."
They walked up Villiers Street into the Strand, and made their way towards Bloomsbury.
"I suppose," said Gilbert, "you wouldn't like to come to Anglesey too?"
Henry hesitated for a few moments. He had a vision of Lady Cecily's beautiful face leaning against the padded side of the car, and he remembered that she had smiled and waved her hand to him....
"No," he replied, "I don't think so ... not at present at any rate!" and then, added in explanation, "If I go, too, the house will be broken up. That would be a pity!"
"I forgot that," Gilbert answered. "Yes, of course!"
Gilbert did not leave London, as he had intended, for Sir Geoffrey Mundane definitely decided to produce "The Magic Casement" in succession to the play which was then being performed at his theatre. He had already discussed the caste with Gilbert, and on the morning after the scene on the Embankment, he telephoned to Gilbert, telling him that he had made engagements for the play, and would like to fix a date on which he should read the manuscript to the company. "Any day'll suit me," Gilbert had informed him, and Sir Geoffrey thereupon settled that the reading should take place two days later. "I suppose," he said, "you'd like to attend the rehearsals?" and Gilbert, forgetting his resolution to fly from Lady Cecily, said that he would. He thought that the experience would be very valuable to him. He became so excited at the prospect of seeing a play of his performed at a West End theatre that he was unable to sit still, and his language, always extravagant, became absurd. He broke every rule that Roger had invented. "It'll take all the royalties you'll receive to pay off this score!" Roger said, thrusting the fine-book before him.
"Poo!" said Gilbert. "I'll buy up the Ten Commandments with one night's royalty! Oh, it's going to be a success, I tell you. It'll run for a year ... more than that ... two years!..." He began to estimate the number of performances the play would receive. "Six evening performances and two matinées every week for fifty-two weeks! Eight times fifty-two, Roger ... you were a Second Wrangler, you ought to know that! Four hundredand sixteen! Lordy God, what a lot! And if I get ten pounds every time it's done ... Oh-h-h! Four thousand, one hundred and sixty pounds! And then there'll be American rights and provincial rights.... I'll tell you what I'll do, coves! I'll buy you all a stick of barley-sugar each, or a penn'orth of acid-drops ... which 'ud you like?..."
It was during the rehearsals of "The Magic Casement" that "Broken Spears" was published.
"It isn't as good as 'Drusilla,'" they said to Henry, when they had read it, "but it'll be more popular!"
It was. The critics who had praised "Drusilla" were not impressed by "Broken Spears," but the critics who had been indifferent to "Drusilla" praised "Broken Spears" so extravagantly that six thousand copies of it were sold in six months, apart from the copies which were sold to the lending libraries, and the sale of "Drusilla," in consequence of the success of "Broken Spears," increased from three hundred and seventy-five copies to one thousand five hundred and eighty. Mr. Quinn, in thanking Henry for a copy of it, merely said, in direct reference to the book, "I see you've been tickling the English. Don't go on doing it!" and the effect of this criticism was so stimulating that Henry destroyed the three chapters of "Turbulence" which were in manuscript and started to re-write the book. Literary agents now began to write to him, telling him how charmed they were with his work and how certain they were of their ability to increase his income considerably; and a publisher of some enterprise and resource wrote to him and said that he would like to see his third book.
"You look as if you were established, Quinny!" said Roger, and Henry blushed and murmured deprecatingly about himself.
"How's the Bar?" he said.
"Oh, it's not bad. I got a fellow off to-day who ought to have had six months hard," Roger answered. "Anda new solicitor has given me a brief. We ought to ask him to dinner and feed him well. F. E. Robinson always tells his butler to bring out the second-quality wine for solicitors. Snob!"
"We seem to be getting on, don't we, coves?" Gilbert interjected. "Look at all these press-cuttings!..."
He held out a fistful of slips which had come that evening from a Press-Cutting Agency. "All about me," he said, "and the play. Mundane knows more about the preliminary puff than any one else in England. He calls me 'this talented young author from whom much may be expected.' I never thought I should get pleasure out of a trade advertisement, but I do. I'm lapping up this stuff like billy-o. I saw a poster on the side of a 'bus this afternoon, advertising 'The Magic Casement.' Mundane's name was in big letters, and you could just see mine with the naked eye. I hopped on to the 'bus and went for a fourpenny ride on it, so's I could touch the damn thing ... and I very nearly told the conductor who I was. It's no good pretending I'm not conceited. I am, and I don't care. Where's Ninian?"
"Not come in yet. How'd the rehearsals go to-day?" Roger answered.
"Better than any other day. They're beginning to feel their parts. It's about time, too. I felt sick with fright yesterday, they were so wooden. Mundane might have been the village idiot, instead of the fine actor he is ... but they're better now. Ninian's late!"
"Is he? He'll be here presently. By the way, my Cousin Rachel's coming to town to-morrow. She's been investigating something or other ... factory life, I think. I thought I'd bring her here to dinner. She may be interesting."
"Do," said Gilbert, and then, as he heard the noise of the street-door being closed, he added, "There's Ninian now!"
Ninian, on his way to his room, stopped for a momentor two, to shout at them, "I say, the mater and Mary've come up from Devon. I got a wire this afternoon. I'm not grubbing with you to-night. They want to go to a theatre, and I've got to climb into gaudy garments and go with them...."
He closed the door and ran up the stairs, but before he reached the first landing, Gilbert called after him, "I say, Ninian!"
"Yes," he answered, pausing on the stairs.
"Bring them to dinner to-morrow night. Roger's Cousin Rachel is coming, and we may as well make a party of it. Gaudy garments and liqueurs. Do you think they'll stay for the first night of my play?"
"That's one of the reasons why they've come up," Ninian answered.