|IT was a few days after Edmund Airey had made his revelation--if it
was a revelation--to Helen Craven, that Harold received a visitor in
the person of Archie Brown. The second week in January had now come. The
season of German Opera was over, and Parliament was about to assemble;
but neither of these matters was engrossing the attention of Archie.
That he was in a state of excitement anyone could see, and before he had
even asked after Harold’s health, he cried, “I’ve fired out the lot of
them, Harry; that’s the sort of new potatoes I am.”
“The lot of what?” asked Harold.
“Don’t you know? Why, the lot of Legitimists,” said Archie.
“The Legitimists? My dear Archie, you don’t surely expect me to believe
that you possess sufficient political power to influence the fortunes of
a French dynasty.”
“French dynasty be grilled. I said the Legitimists--the actors, the
carpenters, the gasmen, the firemen, the check-takers, Shakespeare, and
Mrs. Mowbray of the Legitimate Theatre. I’ve fired out the lot of them,
and be hanged to them!”
“Oh, I see; you’ve fired out Shakespeare?”
“He’s eternally fired out, so far as I’m concerned. Why should I end my
days in a workhouse because a chap wrote plays a couple of hundred years
ago--may be more?”
“Why, indeed? And so you fired him out?”
“I’ve made things hum at the Legitimate this morning”--Archie had once
spent three months in the United States--“and now I’ve made the lot of
them git. I’ve made W. S. git.”
“And Mrs. Mowbray?”
“She gits too.”
“She’ll do it gracefully. Archie, my man, you’re not wanting in
courage.”
“What courage was there needed for that?”--Archie had picked up a quill
pen and was trying, but with indifferent success, to balance it on the
toe of his boot, as he leant back in a chair. “What courage is needed to
tell a chap that’s got hold of your watch chain that the time has come
for him to drop it? Great Godfrey! wasn’t I the master of the lot of
them? Do you fancy that the manager was my master? Do you fancy that
Mrs. Mowbray was my--I mean, do you think that I’m quite an ass?”
“Well, no,” said Harold--“not quite.”
“Do you suppose that my good old dad had any Scruples about firing out a
crowd of navvies when he found that they didn’t pay? Not he. And do you
suppose that I haven’t inherited some of his good qualities?”
“And when does the Legitimate close its doors?”
“This day week. Those doors have been open too long already.
Seventy-five pounds for the Widow’s champagne for the Christmas
week--think of that, Harry. Mrs. Mowbray’s friends drink nothing but
Clicquot. She expects me to pay for her entertainments, and calls it
Shakespeare. If you grabbed a chap picking your pocket, and he explained
to the tarty chips at Bow Street that his initials were W. S. would he
get off? Don’t you believe it, Harry.”
“Nothing shall induce me.”
“The manager’s only claim to have earned his salary is that he has been
at every theatre in London, and has so got the biggest list of people to
send orders to, so as to fill the house nightly. It seems that the most
valuable manager is the one who has the longest list of people who will
accept orders. That’s theatrical enterprise nowadays. They say it’s the
bicycle that has brought it about.”
“Anyhow you’ve quarrelled with Mrs. Mowbray? Give me your hand; Archie.
You’re a man.”
“Quarrelled with Mrs. Mowbray? It was about time. She went to pat my
head again to-day, when there was a buzz in the manager’s office. She
didn’t pat my head, Harry--the day is past for pats, and so I told her.
The day is past when she could butter me with her pats. She gave me a
look when I said that--if she could give such looks on the stage she’d
crowd the house--and then she cried, ‘Nothing on earth shall induce me
ever to speak to you again.’ ‘I ask nothing better,’ said I. After that
she skipped. I promised Norah that I’d do it, and I have done it.”
“You promised whom?”
“Norah. Great Godfrey! you don’t mean to say that you haven’t heard that
Norah Innisfail and I are to be married?”
“Norah--Innisfail--and--you--you?”
Harold lay back in his chair and laughed. The idea of the straightlaced
Miss Innisfail marrying Archie Brown seemed very comical to him.
“What are you laughing about?” said Archie. “You shouldn’t laugh,
considering that it was you that brought it about.”
“I? I wish that I had no more to reproach myself with; but I can’t for
the life of me see how--”
“Didn’t you get Mrs. Lampson to invite me to Abbeylands, and didn’t I
meet Norah there, bless her! At first, do you know, I fancied that I was
getting fond of her mother?”
“Oh, yes; I can understand that,” said Harold, who was fully acquainted
with the systems which Lady Innisfail worked with such success.
“But, bless your heart! it was all motherly kindness on Lady Innisfail’s
part--so she explained when--ah--later on. Then I went with her to Lord
Innisfail’s place at Netherford and--well, there’s no explaining these
things. Norah is the girl for me! I’ve felt a better man for knowing
her, Harry. It’s not every girl that a chap can say that of--mostly the
other way. Lord Innisfail heard something about the Legitimate business,
and he said that it was about time I gave it up; I agreed with him, and
I’ve given it up.”
“Archie,” said Harold, “you’ve done a good morning’s work. I was going
to advise you never to see Mrs. Mowbray again--never to grant her an
interview--she’s an edged tool--but after what you’ve done, I feel that
it would be a great piece of presumption on my part to offer you any
advice.”
“Do you know what it is?” said Archie, in a low and very confidential
voice: “I’m not quite so sure of her character as I used to be. I know
you always stood up for her.”
“I still believe that she never had more than one lover at a time,” said
Harold.
“Was that seventy-five pound’s worth of the Widow swallowed by one lover
in a week?” asked Archie. “Oh, I’m sick of the whole concern. Don’t you
mention Shakespeare to me again.”
“I won’t,” said Harold. “But it strikes me that Shakespeare is like
Madame Roland’s Liberty.”
“Whose Liberty?”
“Madame Roland’s.”
“Oh, she’s a dressmaker of Bond Street, I suppose. They’re all Madames
there. I dare say I’ve got a bill from her to pay with the rest of them.
Mrs. Mowbray has dealt with them all. Now I’m off. I thought I’d drop
in and tell you all that happened, as you’re accountable for my meeting
Norah.”
“You will give her my best regards and warmest congratulations,” said
Harold. “Accept the same yourself.”
“You had a good time at their Irish place yourself, hadn’t you?” said
Archie. “How was it that you didn’t fall in love with Norah when you
were there? That’s what has puzzled me. How is it that every tarty chip
didn’t want to marry her? Oh, I forgot that you--well, wasn’t there a
girl with lovely eyes in Ireland?”
“You have heard of Irish girls and their eyes,” said Harold.
“She had wonderful gray eyes,” said Archie. Harold became grave. “Oh,
yes, Norah has a pair of eyes too, and she keeps them wide open. She
told me a good deal about their party in Ireland. She took it for
granted that you--”
“Archie,” said Harold, “like a good chap don’t you ever talk about that
to me again.”
“All right, I’ll not,” said Archie. “Only, you see, I thought that you
wouldn’t mind now, as everyone says that she’s going to marry Airey, the
M.P. for some place or other. I knew that you’d be glad to hear that I’d
fired out the Legitimate.”
“So I am--very glad.”
Archie was off, having abandoned as futile his well-meant attempts to
balance the quill on the toe first of one boot, then of the other.
He was off, and Harold was standing at the window, watching him
gathering up his reins and sending his horses at a pretty fair pace into
the square.
It had fallen--the blow had fallen. She was going to marry Edmund Airey.
Could he blame her?
He felt that he had treated her with a baseness that deserved the
severest punishment--such punishment as was now in her power to inflict.
She had trusted him with all her heart--all her soul. She had given
herself up to him freely, and he had made her the victim of a fraud.
That was how he had repaid her for her trustfulness.
He did not stir from the window for hours. He thought of her without any
bitterness--all his bitterness was divided between the thoughts of his
own cruelty and the thoughts of Edmund Airey’s cleverness. He did not
know which was the more contemptible; but the conclusion to which he
came, after devoting some time to the consideration of the question of
the relative contemptibility of the two, was that, on the whole, Edmund
Airey’s cleverness was the more abhorrent.
But Archie Brown, after leaving St. James’s, drove with his customary
rapidity to Connaught Square, to tell of his achievement to Norah.
Miss Innisfail, while fully recognizing the personal obligations of
Archie to the Shakesperian drama, had agreed with her father that this
devotion should not be an absorbing one. She had had a hint or two that
it absorbed a good deal of money, and though she had been assured by
Archie that no one could say a word against Mrs. Mowbray’s character,
yet, like Harold--perhaps even better than Harold--she knew that Mrs.
Mowbray was an extremely well-dressed woman. She listened with interest
to Archie’s account of how he had accomplished that process of “firing
out” in regard to the Legitimate artists; and when he had told her all,
she could not help wondering if Mrs. Mowbray would be quite as well
dressed in the future as she had been in the past.
Archie then went on to tell her how he had called upon Harold, and how
Harold had congratulated him.
“You didn’t forget to tell him that people are saying that Mr. Airey is
going to marry Miss Avon?” said Norah.
“Have I ever forgotten to carry out one of your commissions?” he asked.
“Good gracious! You didn’t suggest that you were commissioned by me to
tell him that?”
“Not likely. That’s not the sort of new potatoes I am. I was on the
cautious side, and I didn’t even mention the name of the girl.” He did
not think it necessary to say that the reason for his adoption of this
prudent course was that he had forgotten the name of the girl. “No, but
when I told him that Airey was going to marry her, he gave me a look.”
“A look? What sort of a look?”
“I don’t know. The sort of a look a chap would give to a surgeon who had
just snipped off his leg. Poor old Harry looked a bit cut up. Then he
turned to me and said as gravely as a parson--a bit graver than some
parsons--that he’d feel obliged to me if I’d never mention her name
again.”
“But you hadn’t mentioned her name, you said.”
“Neither I had. He didn’t mention it either. I can only give you an idea
of what he said, I won’t take my oath about the exact words. But I’ll
take my oath that he was more knocked down than any chap I ever came
across.”
“I knew it,” said Norah. “He’s in love with her still. Mamma says he’s
not; but I know perfectly well that he is. She doesn’t care a scrap for
Mr. Airey.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know it.”
“Oh.”