§ 1.
The front-door closed softly behind the theatre-party. Dinner was over,
and Parker had just been assisting the expedition out of the place.
Sensitive to atmosphere, he had found his share in the dinner a little
trying. It had been a strained meal, and what he liked was a clatter of
conversation and everybody having a good time and enjoying themselves.
“Ellen!” called Parker, as he proceeded down the passage to the empty
dining-room. “Ellen!”
Mrs Parker appeared out of the kitchen, wiping her hands. Her work for
the evening, like her husband’s, was over. Presently what is
technically called a “useful girl” would come in to wash the dishes,
leaving the evening free for social intercourse. Mrs Parker had done
well by her patrons that night, and now she wanted a quiet chat with
Parker over a glass of Freddie Rooke’s port.
“Have they gone, Horace?” she asked, following him into the
dining-room.
Parker selected a cigar from Freddie’s humidor, crackled it against his
ear, smelt it, clipped off the end, and lit it. He took the decanter
and filled his wife’s glass, then mixed himself a whisky-and-soda.
“Happy days!” said Parker. “Yes, they’ve gone!”
“I didn’t see her ladyship.”
“You didn’t miss much! A nasty, dangerous specimen, _she_ is! ‘Always
merry and bright’, I don’t think. I wish you’d have had my job of
waiting on ’em, Ellen, and me been the one to stay in the kitchen safe
out of it all. That’s all I say! It’s no treat to _me_ to ‘and the
dishes when the atmosphere’s what you might call electric. I didn’t
envy them that vol-au-vent of yours, Ellen, good as it smelt. Better a
dinner of ’erbs where love is than a stalled ox and ’atred therewith,”
said Parker, helping himself to a walnut.
“Did they have words?”
Parker shook his head impatiently.
“That sort don’t have words, Ellen. They just sit and goggle.”
“How did her ladyship seem to hit it off with Miss Mariner, Horace?”
Parker uttered a dry laugh.
“Ever seen a couple of strange dogs watching each other sort of wary?
That was them! Not that Miss Mariner wasn’t all that was pleasant and
nice-spoken. She’s all right, Miss Mariner is. She’s a little queen! It
wasn’t her fault the dinner you’d took so much trouble over was more
like an evening in the Morgue than a Christian dinner-party. She tried
to help things along best she could. But what with Sir Derek chewing
his lip ’alf the time and his mother acting about as matey as a
pennorth of ice-cream, she didn’t have a chance. As for the
guv’nor,—well, I wish you could have seen him, that’s all. You know,
Ellen, sometimes I’m not altogether easy in my mind about the guv’nor’s
mental balance. He knows how to buy cigars, and you tell me his port is
good—I never touch it myself—but sometimes he seems to me to go right
off his onion. Just sat there, he did, all through dinner, looking as
if he expected the good food to rise up and bite him in the face, and
jumping nervous when I spoke to him. It’s not my fault,” said Parker,
aggrieved. “_I_ can’t give gentlemen warning before I ask ’em if
they’ll have sherry or hock. I can’t ring a bell or toot a horn to show
’em I’m coming. It’s my place to bend over and whisper in their ear,
and they’ve no right to leap about in their seats and make me spill
good wine. (You’ll see the spot close by where you’re sitting, Ellen.
Jogged my wrist, he did!) I’d like to know why people in the spear of
life which these people are in can’t behave themselves rational, same
as we do. When we were walking out and I took you to have tea with my
mother, it was one of the pleasantest meals I ever ate. Talk about
’armony! It was a love-feast!”
“Your ma and I took to each other right from the start, Horace,” said
Mrs Parker softly—“That’s the difference.”
“Well, any woman with any sense would take to Miss Mariner. If I told
you how near I came to spilling the sauce-boat accidentally over that
old fossil’s head, you’d be surprised, Ellen. She just sat there
brooding like an old eagle. If you ask my opinion, Miss Mariner’s a
long sight too good for her precious son!”
“Oh, but Horace! Sir Derek’s a baronet!”
“What of it? Kind ’earts are more than coronets and simple faith than
Norman blood, aren’t they?”
“You’re talking Socialism, Horace.”
“No, I’m not. I’m talking sense. I don’t know who Miss Mariner’s
parents may have been—I never enquired—but anyone can see she’s a lady
born and bred. But do you suppose the path of true love is going to run
smooth, for all that? Not it! She’s got a ’ard time ahead of her, that
poor girl.”
“Horace!” Mrs Parker’s gentle heart was wrung. The situation hinted at
by her husband was no new one—indeed, it formed the basis of at least
fifty per cent of the stories in the True Heart Novelette Series, of
which she was a determined reader—but it had never failed to touch her.
“Do you think her ladyship means to come between them and wreck their
romance?”
“I think she means to have a jolly good try.”
“But Sir Derek has his own money, hasn’t he? I mean, it’s not like when
Sir Courtenay Travers fell in love with the milk-maid and was dependent
on his mother, the Countess, for everything. Sir Derek can afford to do
what he pleases, can’t he?”
Parker shook his head tolerantly. The excellence of the cigar and the
soothing qualities of the whisky-and-soda had worked upon him, and he
was feeling less ruffled.
“You don’t understand these things,” he said. “Women like her ladyship
can talk a man into anything and out of anything. I wouldn’t care, only
you can see the poor girl is mad over the feller. What she finds
attractive in him, I can’t say, but that’s her own affair.”
“He’s very handsome, Horace, with those flashing eyes and that stern
mouth,” argued Mrs Parker.
Parker sniffed.
“Have it your own way,” he said. “It’s no treat to _me_ to see his eyes
flash, and if he’d put that stern mouth of his to some better use than
advising the guv’nor to lock up the cigars and trouser the key, I’d be
better pleased. If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” said Parker, “it’s
not to be trusted!” He lifted his cigar and looked at it censoriously.
“I thought so! Burning all down one side. They will do that if you
light ’em careless. Oh, well,” he continued, rising and going to the
humidor, “there’s plenty more where that came from. Out of evil cometh
good,” said Parker philosophically. “If the guv’nor hadn’t been in such
a overwrought state tonight, he’d have remembered not to leave the key
in the key-hole. Help yourself to another glass of port, Ellen, and
let’s enjoy ourselves!”
§ 2.
When one considers how full of his own troubles, how weighed down with
the problems of his own existence the average playgoer generally is
when he enters a theatre, it is remarkable that dramatists ever find it
possible to divert and entertain whole audiences for a space of several
hours. As regards at least three of those who had assembled to witness
its opening performance, the author of “Tried by Fire,” at the
Leicester Theater, undoubtedly had his work cut out for him.
It has perhaps been sufficiently indicated by the remarks of Parker,
the valet, that the little dinner at Freddie Rooke’s had not been an
unqualified success. Searching the records for an adequately gloomy
parallel to the taxi-cab journey to the theatre which followed it, one
can only think of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. And yet even that was
probably not conducted in dead silence. There must have been moments
when Murat got off a good thing or Ney said something worth hearing
about the weather.
The only member of the party who was even remotely happy was, curiously
enough, Freddie Rooke. Originally Freddie had obtained three tickets
for “Tried by Fire.” The unexpected arrival of Lady Underhill had
obliged him to buy a fourth, separated by several rows from the other
three. This, as he had told Derek at breakfast, was the seat he
proposed to occupy himself.
It consoles the philosopher in this hard world to reflect that, even if
man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards, it is still possible
for small things to make him happy. The thought of being several rows
away from Lady Underhill had restored Freddie’s equanimity like a
tonic. It thrilled him like the strains of some grand, sweet anthem all
the way to the theatre. If Freddie Rooke had been asked at that moment
to define happiness in a few words, he would have replied that it
consisted in being several rows away from Lady Underhill.
The theatre was nearly full when Freddie’s party arrived. The Leicester
Theatre had been rented for the season by the newest theatrical knight,
Sir Chester Portwood, who had a large following; and, whatever might be
the fate of the play in the final issue, it would do at least one
night’s business. The stalls were ablaze with jewelry and crackling
with starched shirt-fronts; and expensive scents pervaded the air,
putting up a stiff battle with the plebeian peppermint that emanated
from the pit. The boxes were filled, and up in the gallery grim-faced
patrons of the drama, who had paid their shillings at the door and
intended to get a shilling’s-worth of entertainment in return, sat and
waited stolidly for the curtain to rise.
First nights at the theatre always excited Jill. The depression induced
by absorbing nourishment and endeavouring to make conversation in the
presence of Lady Underhill left her. The worst, she told herself, had
happened. She had met Derek’s mother, and Derek’s mother plainly
disliked her. Well, that, as Parker would have said, was that. Now she
just wanted to enjoy herself. She loved the theatre. The stir, the buzz
of conversation, the warmth and life of it, all touched a chord in her
which made depression impossible.
The lights shot up beyond the curtain. The house-lights dimmed.
Conversation ceased. The curtain rose. Jill wriggled herself
comfortably into her seat, and slipped her hand into Derek’s. She felt
a glow of happiness as it closed over hers. All, she told herself, was
right with the world.
All, that is to say, except the drama which was unfolding on the stage.
It was one of those plays which start wrong and never recover. By the
end of the first ten minutes there had spread through the theatre that
uneasy feeling which comes over the audience at an opening performance
when it realises that it is going to be bored. A sort of lethargy had
gripped the stalls. The dress-circle was coughing. Up in the gallery
there was grim silence.
Sir Chester Portwood was an actor-manager who had made his reputation
in light comedy of the tea-cup school. His numerous admirers attended a
first night at his theatre in a mood of comfortable anticipation,
assured of something pleasant and frothy with a good deal of bright
dialogue and not too much plot. Tonight he seemed to have fallen a
victim to that spirit of ambition which intermittently attacks
actor-managers of his class, expressing itself in an attempt to prove
that, having established themselves securely as light comedians, they
can, like the lady reciter, turn right around and be serious. The one
thing which the London public felt that it was safe from in a Portwood
play was heaviness, and “Tried by Fire” was grievously heavy. It was a
poetic drama, and the audience, though loth to do anybody an injustice,
was beginning to suspect that it was written in blank verse.
The acting did nothing to dispel the growing uneasiness. Sir Chester
himself, apparently oppressed by the weightiness of the occasion and
the responsibility of offering an unfamiliar brand of goods to his
public, had dropped his customary debonair method of delivering lines
and was mouthing his speeches. It was good gargling, but bad elocution.
And, for some reason best known to himself, he had entrusted the role
of the heroine to a doll-like damsel with a lisp, of whom the audience
disapproved sternly from her initial entrance.
It was about half-way through the first act that Jill, whose attention
had begun to wander, heard a soft groan at her side. The seats which
Freddie Rooke had bought were at the extreme end of the seventh row.
There was only one other seat in the row, and, as Derek had placed his
mother on his left and was sitting between her and Jill, the latter had
this seat on her right. It had been empty at the rise of the curtain,
but in the past few minutes a man had slipped silently into it. The
darkness prevented Jill from seeing his face, but it was plain that he
was suffering, and her sympathy went out to him. His opinion of the
play so obviously coincided with her own.
Presently the first act ended, and the lights went up. There was a
spatter of insincere applause from the stalls, echoed in the
dress-circle. It grew fainter in the upper circle, and did not reach
the gallery at all.
“Well?” said Jill to Derek. “What do you think of it?”
“Too awful for words,” said Derek sternly.
He leaned forward to join in the conversation which had started between
Lady Underhill and some friends she had discovered in the seats in
front; and Jill, turning, became aware that the man on her right was
looking at her intently. He was a big man with rough, wiry hair and a
humorous mouth. His age appeared to be somewhere in the middle
twenties. Jill, in the brief moment in which their eyes met, decided
that he was ugly, but with an ugliness that was rather attractive. He
reminded her of one of those large, loose, shaggy dogs that break
things in drawing-rooms but make admirable companions for the open
road. She had a feeling that he would look better in tweeds in a field
than in evening dress in a theatre. He had nice eyes. She could not
distinguish their color, but they were frank and friendly.
All this Jill noted with her customary quickness, and then she looked
away. For an instant she had had an odd feeling that somewhere she had
met this man or somebody very like him before, but the impression
vanished. She also had the impression that he was still looking at her,
but she gazed demurely in front of her and did not attempt to verify
the suspicion.
Between them, as they sat side by side, there inserted itself suddenly
the pinkly remorseful face of Freddie Rooke. Freddie, having skirmished
warily in the aisle until it was clear that Lady Underhill’s attention
was engaged elsewhere, had occupied a seat in the row behind which had
been left vacant temporarily by an owner who liked refreshment between
the acts. Freddie was feeling deeply ashamed of himself. He felt that
he had perpetrated a bloomer of no slight magnitude.
“I’m awfully sorry about this,” he said penitently. “I mean, roping you
in to listen to this frightful tosh! When I think I might have got
seats just as well for any one of half a dozen topping musical
comedies, I feel like kicking myself with some vim. But, honestly, how
was I to know? I never dreamed we were going to be let in for anything
of this sort. Portwood’s plays are usually so dashed bright and snappy
and all that. Can’t think what he was doing, putting on a thing like
this. Why, it’s blue round the edges!”
The man on Jill’s right laughed sharply.
“Perhaps,” he said, “the chump who wrote the piece got away from the
asylum long enough to put up the money to produce it.”
If there is one thing that startles the well-bred Londoner and throws
him off his balance, it is to be addressed unexpectedly by a stranger.
Freddie’s sense of decency was revolted. A voice from the tomb could
hardly have shaken him more. All the traditions to which he had been
brought up had gone to solidify his belief that this was one of things
which didn’t happen. Absolutely it wasn’t done. During an earthquake or
a shipwreck and possibly on the Day of Judgment, yes. But only then. At
other times, unless they wanted a match or the time or something,
chappies did not speak to fellows to whom they had not been introduced.
He was far too amiable to snub the man, but to go on with this
degrading scene was out of the question. There was nothing for it but
flight.
“Oh, ah, yes,” he mumbled. “Well,” he added to Jill, “I suppose I may
as well be toddling back. See you later and so forth.”
And with a faint ‘Good-bye-ee!’ Freddie removed himself, thoroughly
unnerved.
Jill looked out of the corner of her eye at Derek. He was still
occupied with the people in front. She turned to the man on her right.
She was not the slave to etiquette that Freddie was. She was much too
interested in life to refrain from speaking to strangers.
“You shocked him!” she said, dimpling.
“Yes. It broke Freddie all up, didn’t it!”
It was Jill’s turn to be startled. She looked at him in astonishment.
“Freddie?”
“That _was_ Freddie Rooke, wasn’t it? Surely I wasn’t mistaken?”
“But—do you know him? He didn’t seem to know you.”
“These are life’s tragedies. He has forgotten me. My boyhood friend!”
“Oh, you were at school with him?”
“No. Freddie went to Winchester, if I remember. I was at Haileybury.
Our acquaintance was confined to the holidays. My people lived near his
people in Worcestershire.”
“Worcestershire!” Jill leaned forward excitedly. “But _I_ used to live
near Freddie in Worcestershire myself when I was small. I knew him
there when he was a boy. We must have met!”
“We met all right.”
Jill wrinkled her forehead. That odd familiar look was in his eyes
again. But memory failed to respond. She shook her head.
“I don’t remember you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Never mind. Perhaps the recollection would have been painful.”
“How do you mean, painful?”
“Well, looking back, I can see that I must have been a very unpleasant
child. I have always thought it greatly to the credit of my parents
that they let me grow up. It would have been so easy to have dropped
something heavy on me out of a window. They must have been tempted a
hundred times, but they refrained. Yes, I was a great pest around the
home. My only redeeming point was the way I worshipped _you_!”
“What!”
“Oh, yes. You probably didn’t notice it at the time, for I had a
curious way of expressing my adoration. But you remain the brightest
memory of a checkered youth.”
Jill searched his face with grave eyes, then shook her head again.
“Nothing stirs?” asked the man sympathetically.
“It’s too maddening! Why does one forget things?” She reflected. “You
aren’t Bobby Morrison?”
“I am not. What is more, I never was!”
Jill dived into the past once more and emerged with another
possibility.
“Or Charlie—Charlie what was it?—Charlie Field?”
“You wound me! Have you forgotten that Charlie Field wore velvet Lord
Fauntleroy suits and long golden curls? My past is not smirched with
anything like that.”
“Would I remember your name if you told me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve forgotten yours. Your surname, that is. Of course I
remember that your Christian name was Jill. It has always seemed to me
the prettiest monosyllable in the language.” He looked at her
thoughtfully. “It’s odd how little you’ve altered in looks. Freddie’s
just the same, too, only larger. And he didn’t wear an eye-glass in
those days, though I can see he was bound to later on. And yet I’ve
changed so much that you can’t place me. It shows what a wearing life I
must have led. I feel like Rip van Winkle. Old and withered. But that
may be just the result of watching this play.”
“It is pretty terrible, isn’t it?”
“Worse than that. Looking at it dispassionately, I find it the extreme,
ragged, outermost edge of the limit. Freddie had the correct
description of it. He’s a great critic.”
“I really do think it’s the worst thing I have ever seen.”
“I don’t know what plays you have seen, but I feel you’re right.”
“Perhaps the second act’s better,” said Jill optimistically.
“It’s worse. I know that sounds like boasting, but it’s true. I feel
like getting up and making a public apology.”
“But … Oh!”
Jill turned scarlet. A monstrous suspicion had swept over her.
“The only trouble is,” went on her companion, “that the audience would
undoubtedly lynch me. And, though it seems improbable just at the
present moment, it may be that life holds some happiness for me that’s
worth waiting for. Anyway I’d rather not be torn limb from limb. A
messy finish! I can just see them rending me asunder in a spasm of
perfectly justifiable fury. ‘She loves me!’ Off comes a leg. ‘She loves
me not!’ Off comes an arm. No, I think on the whole I’ll lie low.
Besides, why should I care? Let ’em suffer. It’s their own fault. They
_would_ come!”
Jill had been trying to interrupt the harangue. She was greatly
concerned.
“Did you _write_ the play?”
The man nodded.
“You are quite right to speak in that horrified tone. But, between
ourselves and on the understanding that you don’t get up and denounce
me, I did.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“Not half so sorry as I am, believe me!”
“I mean, I wouldn’t have said …”
“Never mind. You didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know.” The lights
began to go down. He rose. “Well, they’re off again. Perhaps you will
excuse me? I don’t feel quite equal to assisting any longer at the
wake. If you want something to occupy your mind during the next act,
try to remember my name.”
He slid from his seat and disappeared. Jill clutched at Derek.
“Oh, Derek, it’s too awful. I’ve just been talking to the man who wrote
this play, and I told him it was the worst thing I had ever seen!”
“Did you?” Derek snorted. “Well, it’s about time somebody told him!” A
thought seemed to strike him. “Why, who is he? I didn’t know you knew
him.”
“I don’t. I don’t even know his name.”
“His name, according to the programme, is John Grant. Never heard of
him before. Jill, I wish you would not talk to people you don’t know,”
said Derek with a note of annoyance in his voice. “You can never tell
who they are.”
“But …”
“Especially with my mother here. You must be more careful.”
The curtain rose. Jill saw the stage mistily. From childhood up, she
had never been able to cure herself of an unfortunate sensitiveness
when sharply spoken to by those she loved. A rebuking world she could
face with a stout heart, but there had always been just one or two
people whose lightest word of censure could crush her. Her father had
always had that effect upon her, and now Derek had taken his place.
But if there had only been time to explain … Derek could not object to
her chatting with a friend of her childhood, even if she had completely
forgotten him and did not remember his name even now. John Grant?
Memory failed to produce any juvenile John Grant for her inspection.
Puzzling over this problem, Jill missed much of the beginning of the
second act. Hers was a detachment which the rest of the audience would
gladly have shared. For the poetic drama, after a bad start, was now
plunging into worse depths of dulness. The coughing had become almost
continuous. The stalls, supported by the presence of large droves of
Sir Chester’s personal friends, were struggling gallantly to maintain a
semblance of interest, but the pit and gallery had plainly given up
hope. The critic of a weekly paper of small circulation, who had been
shoved up in the upper circle, grimly jotted down the phrase
“apathetically received” on his programme. He had come to the theatre
that night in an aggrieved mood, for managers usually put him in the
dress-circle. He got out his pencil again. Another phrase had occurred
to him, admirable for the opening of his article. “At the Leicester
Theatre,” he wrote, “where Sir Chester Portwood presented ‘Tried by
Fire,’ dulness reigned supreme. …”
But you never know. Call no evening dull till it is over. However
uninteresting its early stages may have been, that night was to be as
animated and exciting as any audience could desire,—a night to be
looked back to and talked about. For just as the critic of _London
Gossip_ wrote those damning words on his programme, guiding his pencil
uncertainly in the dark, a curious yet familiar odor stole over the
house.
The stalls got it first, and sniffed. It rose to the dress-circle, and
the dress-circle sniffed. Floating up, it smote the silent gallery.
And, suddenly, coming to life with a single-minded abruptness, the
gallery ceased to be silent.
“Fire!”
Sir Chester Portwood, ploughing his way through a long speech, stopped
and looked apprehensively over his shoulder. The girl with the lisp,
who had been listening in a perfunctory manner to the long speech,
screamed loudly. The voice of an unseen stage-hand called thunderously
to an invisible “Bill” to cummere quick. And from the scenery on the
prompt side there curled lazily across the stage a black wisp of smoke.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
“Just,” said a voice at Jill’s elbow, “what the play needed!” The
mysterious author was back in his seat again.