method I follow the system of Herbert Spencer towards children. Of
course you are familiar with his treatise on ‘Education’? If a rough boy
persists, after warnings, in tearing or soiling all his clothes, don’t
scold him for what, after all, is only a natural and healthy instinct
overdone. But equally, of course, don’t punish yourself by buying him
other clothes. When the time comes for the children to be taken to an
entertainment little Tommy cannot go with them. It would not be seemly,
and he is too ashamed, to go in rags. He begins to see the force of
practical logic. Very well. If a tradesman promises--promises
explicitly--delivery of his goods by a certain time and he fails, he
finds that he is then unable to leave them. I pay on delivery, by the
way. If a man undertakes to make me an article like another--I am
painstaking, Mr Carrados: I point out at the time how exactly like I
want it--and it is (as it generally is) on completion something quite
different, I decline to be easy-going and to be put off with it. I take
the simplest and most obvious instances; I could multiply indefinitely.
It is, of course, frequently inconvenient to me, but it establishes a
standard.”
“I see that you are a dangerous man, Mr Belting,” remarked Carrados. “If
most men were like you our national character would be undermined.
People would have to behave properly.”
“If most men were like me we should constitute an intolerable nuisance,”
replied Belting seriously. “A necessary reaction towards sloppiness
would set in and find me at its head. I am always with minorities.”
“And the case in point?”
“The present trouble centres round the kitchen sink. It is cracked and
leaks. A trivial cause for so elaborate an outcome, you may say, but you
will doubtless remember that two men quarrelling once at a spring as to
who should use it first involved half Europe in a war, and the whole
tragedy of _Lear_ sprang from a silly business round a word. I hadn’t
noticed the sink when we took this flat, but the landlord had solemnly
sworn to do everything that was necessary. Is a new sink necessary to
replace a cracked one? Obviously. Well, you know what landlords are:
possibly you are one yourself. They promise you heaven until you have
signed the agreement and then they tell you to go to hell. Suggested
that we’d probably broken the sink ourselves and would certainly be
looked to to replace it. An excellent servant caught a cold standing in
the drip and left. Was I to be driven into paying for a new sink myself?
Very well, I thought, if the reasonable complaint of one tenant is
nothing to you, see how you like the unreasonable complaints of fifty.
The method served a useful purpose too. When Mrs Belting heard that old
tale about the tragedy at No. 11 she was terribly upset; vowed that she
couldn’t stay alone in here at night on any consideration.
“‘My dear,’ I said, ‘don’t worry yourself about ghosts. I’ll make as
good a one as ever lived, and then when you see how it takes other
people in, just remember next time you hear of another that someone’s
pulling the string.’ And I really don’t think that she’ll ever be afraid
of ghosts again.”
“Thank you,” said Carrados, rising. “Altogether I have spent a very
entertaining evening, Mr Belting. I hope your retaliatory method won’t
get you into serious trouble this time.”
“Why should it?” demanded Belting quickly.
“Oh, well, tenants are complaining, the property is being depreciated.
The landlord may think that he has legal redress against you.”
“But surely I am at liberty to light the gas or use the bath in my own
flat when and how I like?”
A curious look had come into Mr Belting’s smiling face; a curious note
must have sounded in his voice. Carrados was warned and, being warned,
guessed.
“You are a wonderful man,” he said with upraised hand. “I capitulate.
Tell me how it is, won’t you?”
“I knew the man at 11. His tenancy isn’t really up till March, but he
got an appointment in the north and had to go. His two unexpired months
weren’t worth troubling about, so I got him to sublet the flat to
me--all quite regularly--for a nominal consideration, and not to mention
it.”
“But he gave up the keys?”
“No. He left them in the door and the porter took them away. Very
unwarrantable of him; surely I can keep my keys where I like? However,
as I had another.... Really, Mr Carrados, you hardly imagine that unless
I had an absolute right to be there I should penetrate into a flat,
tamper with the gas and water, knock the place about, tramp up and
down----”
“I go,” said Carrados, “to get our people out in haste. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Mr Carrados. It’s been a great privilege to meet you. Sorry
I can’t persuade you....”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI
The Missing Actress Sensation
First nights are not what they were, even within the memory of playgoers
who would be startled to hear anyone else refer to them as “elderly.”
But there are yet occasions of exception, and the production of _Call a
Spade----_ at the Argosy Theatre was marked by at least one feature of
note. The play itself was “sound,” though not epoch-making. The
performance of the leading lady was satisfactory and exactly what was to
be expected from her. The leading gentleman was equally effective in a
part which--as eight out of twelve dramatic critics happily phrased it
on the morrow--“fitted him like a glove”; and on the same preponderance
of opinion the character actor “contrived to extract every ounce of
humour from the material at his disposal.” In other words, _Call a
Spade----_ might so far be relied upon to run an attenuating course for
about fifty nights and then to be discreetly dropped, “pending the
continuance of its triumphal progress at another West End house--should
a suitable habitation become available.”
But a very different note came into the reviews when the writers passed
to the achievement of another member of the company--a young actress
described on the programme as Miss Una Roscastle. Miss Roscastle was
unknown to London critics and London audiences. She had come from Dublin
with no very great dramatic reputation, but it is to be presumed that
the quite secondary part which she had been given on her first
metropolitan appearance was peculiarly suited to her talent. No one was
more surprised than the author at the remarkable characterisation that
“Mary Ryan” assumed in Miss Roscastle’s hands. He was the more surprised
because he had failed to notice anything of the kind at rehearsals.
Dimly he suspected that the young lady had got more out of the part than
he had ever put into it, and while outwardly loud in his expression of
delight, he was secretly uncertain whether to be pleased or annoyed. The
leading lady also went out of her way to congratulate the young neophyte
effusively on her triumph--and then slapped her unfortunate dresser on
very insufficient provocation; but the lessee manager spoke of his
latest acquisition with a curious air of restraint. At the end of the
second act Miss Roscastle took four calls. After that she was only
required for the first few minutes of the last act, and many among the
audience noted with surprise that she did not appear with the company at
the fall of the curtain--she had, in fact, already left the house. All
the same the success of the piece constituted a personal triumph for
herself. Thenceforth, instead of, “Oh yes, you might do worse than book
seats at the Argosy,” the people who had been, said, “Now don’t forget;
you positively _must_ see Miss Roscastle in _Call a Spade----_,” and as
the Press had said very much the same, the difference to the box-office
was something, but to the actress it was everything. Miss Roscastle,
indeed, had achieved that rare distinction of “waking to find herself
famous.” Nothing could have seemed more assured and roseate than her
professional future.
About a week later Max Carrados was interrupted one afternoon in the
middle of composing an article on Sicilian numismatics by a telephone
call from Mr Carlyle. The blind man smiled as he returned his friend’s
greeting, for Louis Carlyle’s voice was wonderfully suggestive in its
phases of the varying aspects of the speaker himself, and at that moment
it conveyed a portrait of Mr Carlyle in his very best early-morning
business manner--spruce and debonair, a little obtuse to things beyond
his experience and impervious to criticism, but self-confident,
trenchant and within his limits capable. In its crisp yet benign
complacency Carrados could almost have sworn to resplendent patent
boots, the current shade in suède gloves and a carefully selected
picotee.
“If you are doing nothing better to-night, Max,” continued the inquiry
agent, “would you join me at the Argosy Theatre? I have a box, and we
might go on to the Savoy afterwards. Now don’t say you are engaged,
there’s a good fellow,” he urged. “You haven’t given me the chance of
playing host for a month or more.”
“The fact is,” confessed Carrados, “I was there for the first night only
a week ago.”
“How unfortunate,” exclaimed the other. “But don’t you think that you
could put up with it again?”
“I am sure I can,” agreed Carrados. “Yes, I will join you there with
pleasure.”
“Delightful,” crowed Mr Carlyle. “Let us say----” The essential details
were settled in a trice, but the “call” had not yet expired and the
sociable gentleman still held the wire. “Were you interested in Miss
Roscastle, Max?”
“Decidedly.”
“That is fortunate. My choice of a theatre is not unconnected with a
case I have on hand. I may be able to tell you something about the
lady.”
“Possibly we shall not be alone?” suggested Carrados.
“Well, no; not absolutely,” admitted Carlyle. “Charming young fellow,
though. I’m sure you’ll like him, Max. Trevor Enniscorthy, a younger son
of old Lord Sleys.”
“Conventional rotter, between ourselves?” inquired Max.
“Not a bit of it,” declared Mr Carlyle loyally. “A young fellow of five
and twenty is none the worse for being enamoured of a fascinating
creature who happens to be on the stage. He is----Oh, very well.
Good-bye, Max. Eight-fifteen, remember.”
They were all punctual. In fact, “If Mr Enniscorthy could have got me
along we should have been here before the doors opened,” declared Mr
Carlyle when the blind man joined them. “Now why are there no programmes
about here, I wonder?”
“I hardly fancy they anticipate their box-holders arriving twenty
minutes before the curtain rises,” suggested Carrados.
“There are some,” exclaimed Mr Enniscorthy, dashing out as an attendant
crossed the circle. He was back in a moment, and standing in the
obscurity of the box eagerly tore open the programme. “Still in,” he
muttered, coming forward and throwing the paper down for the others to
refer to. “Oh, excuse my impatience,” he apologised, colouring. “I am
rather----” He left them to supply the rest.
“Mr Enniscorthy has given me permission to explain his position, Max,”
began Mr Carlyle, but the young man abruptly cut short the proposition
stated in this vein of deference.
“I’d rather put it that if Mr Carrados would help me with his advice I
should be most awfully grateful,” he said in a very clear, rather highly
pitched voice. “I suppose it’s inevitable to feel no end of an ass over
this sort of thing, but I’m desperately in earnest and I _must_ go
through with it.”
“Admirable!” beamed Mr Carlyle’s inextinguishable eye, and he murmured:
“Very natural, I am sure,” in the voice of a man who has just been told
to go up higher.
“Perhaps you know that there is a Miss Roscastle put down as appearing
in this piece?” went on Enniscorthy. “Well, I knew Miss Roscastle rather
well in Ireland. I came to London because----I followed her here.”
“Engaged?” dropped quietly from Carrados’s lips.
“I cannot say that we were actually engaged,” was the admission, “but
it--well, you know how these things stand. At all events she knew what I
felt towards her and she did not discourage my hopes.”
“Did your people know of this, Mr Enniscorthy?”
“I had not spoken to my father or to my stepmother, but they might
easily have heard something of it,” replied the young man. “Miss
Roscastle, although she did not go about much, was received by the very
best people in Dublin. Of course for many things I did not like her
being on the stage; in fact I detested it, but she had taken the step
before I knew her, and how could I object? Then she got the offer of
this London engagement. She was ambitious to get on in her profession,
and took it. In a very short time I found it impossible to exist there
without seeing her, so I made an excuse to get away and followed.”
“Let me see,” put in Mr Carlyle ingenuously; “I forget the exact dates.”
“Miss Roscastle came on Monday, October the 4th,” said Enniscorthy. “The
piece opened on the following Thursday week--the 14th. I left Kingstown
by the early boat yesterday. At this end we were nearly an hour late,
and after going to my hotel, changing and dining, I had just time to
come on here and bag the last stall. I thought that I would send a note
round after the first act and ask Una to give me a few minutes
afterwards. But it never came to that. Instead I got a very large
surprise. ‘Mary Ryan’ came on, and I looked--and looked again. I didn’t
need glasses, but I got a pair out of the automatic box in front of me
and had another level stare. Well, it wasn’t Miss Roscastle. This girl
was like her. I suppose to most people they would be wonderfully alike,
and her voice--although it wasn’t really Irish--yes, her voice was
similar. But to me there were miles of difference. I saw at once that
she was an understudy, although ‘Miss Una Roscastle’ was still down in
the programme, and I began to quake at the thought of something having
happened to her.
“I slipped out into the corridor--I had an end seat--and got hold of a
programme girl.
“‘Do you know why Miss Roscastle is out of the cast to-night?’ I asked
her. ‘Is she indisposed?’
“She took the programme out of my hand and pointed to a name in it.
“‘She’s in all right,’ she replied--stupidly, I thought. ‘There’s her
name.’
“‘Yes, she is on the programme,’ I replied, ‘but not on the stage. Look
through the glass there. That is not Miss Roscastle.’
“She glanced through the glazed door and then turned away as though she
suspected me of chaffing her.
“‘It’s the only Miss Roscastle I’ve ever seen here,’ she said as she
went.
“I wandered about and interrogated one or two other attendants. They all
gave me the same answer. I began to get frightened.
“‘They must be misled by the resemblance,’ I assured myself. ‘It really
is wonderful.’ I went back to my seat and then remembered that I had got
no further with my original inquiry, which was to find out whether Una
was ill or not. I couldn’t remain. I kept my eyes fixed on ‘Mary Ryan’
every time she was on the stage, and every time I became more and more
convinced. Finally I got up again and going round sent in my card to the
manager.”
“Stokesey?” asked Carrados.
“Yes. I didn’t know who was technically the right man, but he, at any
rate, had engaged Miss Roscastle. He saw me at once.
“‘I have come across from Dublin to see Miss Roscastle,’ I told him,
‘and I am very disappointed to find her out of the cast. Can you tell me
why she is away?’
“‘Surely you are mistaken,’ he replied, opening a programme that lay
before him. ‘Do you know Miss Roscastle by sight?’
“‘Very well indeed,’ I retorted. ‘Better than your staff do. The “Mary
Ryan” to-night is not Miss Roscastle.’
“‘I will inquire,’ he said, walking to the door. ‘Please wait a minute.’
“He was rigidly courteous, but instinct was telling me all the time that
it was sheer bluff. He had nothing to inquire. In a moment he was back
again.
“‘I am informed that the programme is correct,’ he said with the same
smooth insincerity, standing in the middle of the room for me to leave.
‘Miss Roscastle is on the stage at this moment. The make-up must have
deceived you, Mr Enniscorthy.’
“I had nothing to reply, because I did not even know what to think. I
simply proceeded to walk out.
“‘One moment.’ I had reached the door when Mr Stokesey spoke. ‘You are a
friend of Miss Roscastle, I suppose?’
“‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I think I may claim that.’
“‘Then I would merely suggest to you that to start a rumour crediting
her with being out of the piece is a service she would fail to
appreciate. Good-evening.’
“I left the theatre because I despaired of getting any real information
after that, and it occurred to me that I could do better elsewhere.
Although Una and I did not correspond, I had begged her, before she
left, to let me know that she arrived safely, and she had sent me just
half-a-dozen lines. I now took a taxi and drove off to the address she
had given--a sort of private hotel or large boarding-house near Holborn.
“‘Can you tell me if Miss Roscastle is in?’ I asked at the office.
“‘Roscastle?’ said the fellow there. ‘Oh, the young lady from the
theatre. Why, she left us more than a week ago--nearer two, I should
say.’
“This was another facer.
“‘Can you give me the address she went to?’ I asked.
“‘Couldn’t; against our rule,’ he replied. ‘Any letters for her were to
be sent to the theatre.’
“I didn’t think it would be successful to offer him a bribe, so I
thanked him and walked away. As the hall porter opened the door for me I
dropped him a word. In two minutes he came out to where I was waiting.
“‘A Miss Roscastle left here a week or two ago,’ I said. ‘They won’t
give me her address, but you can get it. Here’s a Bradbury. I’ll be here
again in half-an-hour and if you’ve got the address--the house, not the
theatre--there’ll be another for you when I’ve verified it.’
“He looked a bit doubtful. Evidently a decent fellow, I thought.
“‘It’s quite all right,’ I assured him. ‘We are engaged, but I’ve only
just come over.’
“He was waiting for me when I returned. The first thing he did was to
tender me the note back again--a piece of superfluous honesty that
prepared me for the worst.
“‘I’m sorry, sir, but it’s no go,’ he explained. ‘The young lady left no
address beyond the theatre.’
“‘You called a cab for her when she went?’ I suggested.
“‘Yes, sir, but she gave the directions while I was bringing out her
things. I never heard where it was to go.’”
“And that is as far as we have got up to this moment, Max,” struck in Mr
Carlyle briskly.
“I’m afraid it is,” corroborated Enniscorthy. “I got round to the stage
door here in time to see most of the people leave, but neither Miss
Roscastle nor the girl like her were among them.”
“She is off half-an-hour before the piece finishes,” explained Carrados.
“And of course she might not leave by the stage door.”
“In any case it is an extraordinary enough business, is it not, Mr
Carrados?” said Enniscorthy, rather anxious not to be set down a
blundering young idiot for his pains. “What does it mean?”
“So far I would describe it as--curious,” admitted Carrados guardedly.
“Investigation may justify a stronger term. In the meanwhile we need not
miss the play.”
By this time the theatre had practically filled and the orchestra was
tuning up for the overture. With nothing to occupy his attention, Mr
Enniscorthy began to manifest an unhappy restlessness that increased
until the play had been proceeding for some few minutes. Then Carrados
heard Mr Carlyle murmur, “Charming! Charming!” in a tone of mature
connoisseurship; there was a spontaneous round of applause and “Mary
Ryan” was on the scene.
“The understudy again,” Enniscorthy whispered to his companions.
“Well,” remarked Mr Carlyle when the curtain descended for the first
interval, “you are still equally convinced, Mr Enniscorthy?”
“There isn’t the shadow of a doubt,” he replied.
Carrados had been writing a few lines on one of his cards. He now
summoned an attendant.
“Mr Stokesey is in the house?” he asked. “Then give him this,
please--when you next go that way.”
Before the curtain rose the girl came round to the box again.
“Mr Carrados?” she inquired. “Mr Stokesey told me to say that he would
save you the trouble by looking in here during the next interval.”
“Shall I remain?” asked Enniscorthy.
“Oh yes. Stokesey is a most amiable man to do with. I know him slightly.
His attitude to you was evidently the outcome of the circumstances. We
shall all get along very nicely.”
The second act was the occasion of “Mary Ryan’s” great opportunity and
again she carried the enthusiasm of the audience. After the curtain the
young actress had to respond to an insistent call. In the darkness Mr
Stokesey entered the box and stood waiting at the back.
“Glad to see you here again, Mr Carrados,” he remarked, shaking hands
with the blind man as soon as the lights were up. Then he looked at the
other occupants. “My word, I have put my head into the lion’s den!” he
continued, his smile deepening into a good-natured grin. “Don’t shoot,
Mr Enniscorthy; I will climb down without. I see that the game is up.”
“What are you going to tell us?” asked Carrados.
“Everything I know. The lady who has just gone off is not Miss
Roscastle. Mr Enniscorthy was quite right; she wasn’t here last night
either.”
“Then why is her name still in the programme, and why do you and your
people keep up the fiction?” demanded Enniscorthy.
“Because I hoped that Miss Roscastle might have returned to the cast
to-night, and, failing to-night, I hope that she will return to-morrow.
Because we happen to have a substitute in Miss Linknorth so
extraordinarily like the original lady in appearance and voice that no
one--excluding yourself--will have noticed the difference, and because I
have a not unreasonable objection to announcing that the chief
attraction of my theatre is out of the cast. Is there anything very
unaccountable in that?”
Mr Carlyle nodded acquiescence to this moderate proposition; Enniscorthy
seemed to admit it reluctantly; it remained for Carrados to accept the
challenge.
“Only one thing,” he replied with some reluctance.
“And what is that?”
“That Miss Roscastle will not return to the cast and that you are well
aware why she never can return to it.”
“I--what?” demanded the astonished manager.
“Miss Roscastle cannot _return_ to the cast because she has never been
in it.”
Stokesey wavered, burst into a roar of laughter and sat down.
“I give in,” he exclaimed heartily. “That’s my last ditch. Now you
really do know everything that I do.”
“But why has she not been in?” demanded Enniscorthy.
“Better ask the lady herself. I cannot even guess.”
“I will when I can find her.” Not for the first time the young man was
assailed by a horrid fear that he might have been making a fool of
himself. “Where in the meantime is she?”
“The Lord alone knows,” retorted Mr Stokesey feelingly. “Don’t
annihilate me, Mr Enniscorthy; I don’t mean a member of the peerage.
But, I’ll tell you, the lady put me in a very deuced fix.”
“Won’t you take us into your confidence?” suggested Carrados.
“I will, Mr Carrados, because I want a consideration from you in return.
I can put it into a very few words. Twenty minutes before the curtain
went up on the first night a note was sent in to Miss Roscastle. She
read it, put on her hat and coat and went out hurriedly by the stage
door.”
“Well?” said Carlyle encouragingly.
“That is all. That is the last we saw of her--heard of her. She never
returned.”
“But--but----” stammered Enniscorthy, and came up short before the
abysmal nature of the prospect confronting him.
“There are a good many ‘buts’ to be taken into consideration, Mr
Enniscorthy,” said the manager, with a rather cryptic look. “Fortunately
we had Miss Linknorth, and the first costume, as you know, is
immaterial. Up to the last possible moment we hung on to Miss
Roscastle’s return. Then the other had to go on.”
“With not very serious consequences to the success of the play,
apparently,” remarked Carrados.
“That’s the devilment of it,” exclaimed Stokesey warmly. “Don’t you see
the hole it has put me into? If ‘Mary Ryan’ had remained a negligible
quantity it wouldn’t have mattered two straws. But for her own
diabolical vanity Miss Linknorth made a confounded success of the part.
Of course it was too late to have any alteration printed on the first
night and now Miss Roscastle is the draw of the piece. People come to
see Miss Roscastle. Miss Roscastle _is_ the piece.”
“But if you explained that Miss Linknorth was really the creator of the
part----” suggested Mr Carlyle.
Stokesey rattled a provocative laugh at the back of his throat.
“You run a theatre for a few seasons, my dear fellow, and then talk,” he
retorted. “You can’t explain; you can’t do anything; you can only just
sit there. People cease to be rational beings when they set out for a
theatre. If you breathe on a howling success it goes out. If you move a
gold mine of a piece from one theatre to another, next door, everyone
promptly decides to stay away. Don’t ask me the reasons; there are none.
It isn’t a business; it ought to come under the Gaming Act.”
“Mr Stokesey is also faced by the alternative that after he had
announced Miss Linknorth, Miss Roscastle might appear any time and claim
her place.”
The manager nodded. “That’s another consideration,” he said.
“But could she?” inquired Mr Carlyle. “After absenting herself in this
way?”