On the night of his arrival in London, Alexander went immediately to
the hotel on the Embankment at which he always stopped, and in the
lobby he was accosted by an old acquaintance, Maurice Mainhall, who
fell upon him with effusive cordiality and indicated a willingness to
dine with him. Bartley never dined alone if he could help it, and
Mainhall was a good gossip who always knew what had been going on in
town; especially, he knew everything that was not printed in the
newspapers. The nephew of one of the standard Victorian novelists,
Mainhall bobbed about among the various literary cliques of London and
its outlying suburbs, careful to lose touch with none of them. He had
written a number of books himself; among them a “History of Dancing,” a
“History of Costume,” a “Key to Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” a study of “The
Poetry of Ernest Dowson,” etc. Although Mainhall’s enthusiasm was often
tiresome, and although he was often unable to distinguish between facts
and vivid figments of his imagination, his imperturbable good nature
overcame even the people whom he bored most, so that they ended by
becoming, in a reluctant manner, his friends. In appearance, Mainhall
was astonishingly like the conventional stage-Englishman of American
drama: tall and thin, with high, hitching shoulders and a small head
glistening with closely brushed yellow hair. He spoke with an extreme
Oxford accent, and when he was talking well, his face sometimes wore
the rapt expression of a very emotional man listening to music.
Mainhall liked Alexander because he was an engineer. He had
preconceived ideas about everything, and his idea about Americans was
that they should be engineers or mechanics. He hated them when they
presumed to be anything else.
While they sat at dinner Mainhall acquainted Bartley with the fortunes
of his old friends in London, and as they left the table he proposed
that they should go to see Hugh MacConnell’s new comedy, “Bog Lights.”
“It’s really quite the best thing MacConnell’s done,” he explained as
they got into a hansom. “It’s tremendously well put on, too. Florence
Merrill and Cyril Henderson. But Hilda Burgoyne’s the hit of the piece.
Hugh’s written a delightful part for her, and she’s quite
inexpressible. It’s been on only two weeks, and I’ve been half a dozen
times already. I happen to have MacConnell’s box for tonight or there’d
be no chance of our getting places. There’s everything in seeing Hilda
while she’s fresh in a part. She’s apt to grow a bit stale after a
time. The ones who have any imagination do.”
“Hilda Burgoyne!” Alexander exclaimed mildly. “Why, I haven’t heard of
her for—years.”
Mainhall laughed. “Then you can’t have heard much at all, my dear
Alexander. It’s only lately, since MacConnell and his set have got hold
of her, that she’s come up. Myself, I always knew she had it in her. If
we had one real critic in London—but what can one expect? Do you know,
Alexander,”—Mainhall looked with perplexity up into the top of the
hansom and rubbed his pink cheek with his gloved finger,—“do you know,
I sometimes think of taking to criticism seriously myself. In a way, it
would be a sacrifice; but, dear me, we do need some one.”
Just then they drove up to the Duke of York’s, so Alexander did not
commit himself, but followed Mainhall into the theatre. When they
entered the stage-box on the left the first act was well under way, the
scene being the interior of a cabin in the south of Ireland. As they
sat down, a burst of applause drew Alexander’s attention to the stage.
Miss Burgoyne and her donkey were thrusting their heads in at the half
door. “After all,” he reflected, “there’s small probability of her
recognizing me. She doubtless hasn’t thought of me for years.” He felt
the enthusiasm of the house at once, and in a few moments he was caught
up by the current of MacConnell’s irresistible comedy. The audience had
come forewarned, evidently, and whenever the ragged slip of a
donkey-girl ran upon the stage there was a deep murmur of approbation,
every one smiled and glowed, and Mainhall hitched his heavy chair a
little nearer the brass railing.
“You see,” he murmured in Alexander’s ear, as the curtain fell on the
first act, “one almost never sees a part like that done without
smartness or mawkishness. Of course, Hilda is Irish,—the Burgoynes have
been stage people for generations,—and she has the Irish voice. It’s
delightful to hear it in a London theatre. That laugh, now, when she
doubles over at the hips—who ever heard it out of Galway? She saves her
hand, too. She’s at her best in the second act. She’s really
MacConnell’s poetic motif, you see; makes the whole thing a fairy
tale.”
The second act opened before Philly Doyle’s underground still, with
Peggy and her battered donkey come in to smuggle a load of potheen
across the bog, and to bring Philly word of what was doing in the world
without, and of what was happening along the roadsides and ditches with
the first gleam of fine weather. Alexander, annoyed by Mainhall’s sighs
and exclamations, watched her with keen, half-skeptical interest. As
Mainhall had said, she was the second act; the plot and feeling alike
depended upon her lightness of foot, her lightness of touch, upon the
shrewdness and deft fancifulness that played alternately, and sometimes
together, in her mirthful brown eyes. When she began to dance, by way
of showing the gossoons what she had seen in the fairy rings at night,
the house broke into a prolonged uproar. After her dance she withdrew
from the dialogue and retreated to the ditch wall back of Philly’s
burrow, where she sat singing “The Rising of the Moon” and making a
wreath of primroses for her donkey.
When the act was over Alexander and Mainhall strolled out into the
corridor. They met a good many acquaintances; Mainhall, indeed, knew
almost every one, and he babbled on incontinently, screwing his small
head about over his high collar. Presently he hailed a tall, bearded
man, grim-browed and rather battered-looking, who had his opera cloak
on his arm and his hat in his hand, and who seemed to be on the point
of leaving the theatre.
“MacConnell, let me introduce Mr. Bartley Alexander. I say! It’s going
famously to-night, Mac. And what an audience! You’ll never do anything
like this again, mark me. A man writes to the top of his bent only
once.”
The playwright gave Mainhall a curious look out of his deep-set faded
eyes and made a wry face. “And have I done anything so fool as that,
now?” he asked.
“That’s what I was saying,” Mainhall lounged a little nearer and
dropped into a tone even more conspicuously confidential. “And you’ll
never bring Hilda out like this again. Dear me, Mac, the girl couldn’t
possibly be better, you know.”
MacConnell grunted. “She’ll do well enough if she keeps her pace and
doesn’t go off on us in the middle of the season, as she’s more than
like to do.”
He nodded curtly and made for the door, dodging acquaintances as he
went.
“Poor old Hugh,” Mainhall murmured. “He’s hit terribly hard. He’s been
wanting to marry Hilda these three years and more. She doesn’t take up
with anybody, you know. Irene Burgoyne, one of her family, told me in
confidence that there was a romance somewhere back in the beginning.
One of your countrymen, Alexander, by the way; an American student whom
she met in Paris, I believe. I dare say it’s quite true that there’s
never been any one else.” Mainhall vouched for her constancy with a
loftiness that made Alexander smile, even while a kind of rapid
excitement was tingling through him. Blinking up at the lights,
Mainhall added in his luxurious, worldly way: “She’s an elegant little
person, and quite capable of an extravagant bit of sentiment like that.
Here comes Sir Harry Towne. He’s another who’s awfully keen about her.
Let me introduce you. Sir Harry Towne, Mr. Bartley Alexander, the
American engineer.”
Sir Harry Towne bowed and said that he had met Mr. Alexander and his
wife in Tokyo.
Mainhall cut in impatiently.
“I say, Sir Harry, the little girl’s going famously to-night, isn’t
she?”
Sir Harry wrinkled his brows judiciously. “Do you know, I thought the
dance a bit conscious to-night, for the first time. The fact is, she’s
feeling rather seedy, poor child. Westmere and I were back after the
first act, and we thought she seemed quite uncertain of herself. A
little attack of nerves, possibly.”
He bowed as the warning bell rang, and Mainhall whispered: “You know
Lord Westmere, of course,—the stooped man with the long gray mustache,
talking to Lady Dowle. Lady Westmere is very fond of Hilda.”
When they reached their box the house was darkened and the orchestra
was playing “The Cloak of Old Gaul.” In a moment Peggy was on the stage
again, and Alexander applauded vigorously with the rest. He even leaned
forward over the rail a little. For some reason he felt pleased and
flattered by the enthusiasm of the audience. In the half-light he
looked about at the stalls and boxes and smiled a little consciously,
recalling with amusement Sir Harry’s judicial frown. He was beginning
to feel a keen interest in the slender, barefoot donkey-girl who
slipped in and out of the play, singing, like some one winding through
a hilly field. He leaned forward and beamed felicitations as warmly as
Mainhall himself when, at the end of the play, she came again and again
before the curtain, panting a little and flushed, her eyes dancing and
her eager, nervous little mouth tremulous with excitement.
When Alexander returned to his hotel—he shook Mainhall at the door of
the theatre—he had some supper brought up to his room, and it was late
before he went to bed. He had not thought of Hilda Burgoyne for years;
indeed, he had almost forgotten her. He had last written to her from
Canada, after he first met Winifred, telling her that everything was
changed with him—that he had met a woman whom he would marry if he
could; if he could not, then all the more was everything changed for
him. Hilda had never replied to his letter. He felt guilty and unhappy
about her for a time, but after Winifred promised to marry him he
really forgot Hilda altogether. When he wrote her that everything was
changed for him, he was telling the truth. After he met Winifred
Pemberton he seemed to himself like a different man. One night when he
and Winifred were sitting together on the bridge, he told her that
things had happened while he was studying abroad that he was sorry
for,—one thing in particular,—and he asked her whether she thought she
ought to know about them. She considered a moment and then said “No, I
think not, though I am glad you ask me. You see, one can’t be jealous
about things in general; but about particular, definite, personal
things,”—here she had thrown her hands up to his shoulders with a
quick, impulsive gesture—“oh, about those I should be very jealous. I
should torture myself—I couldn’t help it.” After that it was easy to
forget, actually to forget. He wondered to-night, as he poured his
wine, how many times he had thought of Hilda in the last ten years. He
had been in London more or less, but he had never happened to hear of
her. “All the same,” he lifted his glass, “here’s to you, little Hilda.
You’ve made things come your way, and I never thought you’d do it.
“Of course,” he reflected, “she always had that combination of
something homely and sensible, and something utterly wild and daft. But
I never thought she’d do anything. She hadn’t much ambition then, and
she was too fond of trifles. She must care about the theatre a great
deal more than she used to. Perhaps she has me to thank for something,
after all. Sometimes a little jolt like that does one good. She was a
daft, generous little thing. I’m glad she’s held her own since. After
all, we were awfully young. It was youth and poverty and proximity, and
everything was young and kindly. I shouldn’t wonder if she could laugh
about it with me now. I shouldn’t wonder— But they’ve probably spoiled
her, so that she’d be tiresome if one met her again.”
Bartley smiled and yawned and went to bed.