To be precise, it miscalled him "Stahf": a shrill, penetrating,
overcultivated, American voice making an attempt only semi-successful to
cope with the broad vowels of modern English enunciation.
Staff looked up, recognised its owner, and said beneath his breath: "O
Lord!"--his soul crawling with recognition. But nothing of this was
discernible in the alacrity with which he jumped up and bent over a bony
but bedizened hand.
"Mrs. Ilkington!" he said.
"R'ally," said the lady, "the world _is_ ve-ry small, isn't it?"
She was a lean, angular, inordinately vivacious body whose years, which
were many more than forty, were making a brave struggle to masquerade as
thirty. She was notorious for her execrable taste in gowns and jewelry,
but her social position was impregnable, and her avowed mission in life
was to bring together Society (meaning the caste of money) with the Arts
(meaning those humble souls content to sell their dreams for the
wherewithal to sustain life).
Her passion for bromidioms always stupefied Staff--left him dazed and
witless. In the present instance he could think of nothing by way of
response happier than that hoary banality: "This is indeed a surprise."
"Flatterer!" said Mrs. Ilkington archly. "_I'm_ not surprised," she
pursued. "I might have known _you'd_ be aboard this vessel."
"You must be a prophetess of sorts, then," he said, smiling. "I didn't
know I was going to sail, myself, till late yesterday afternoon."
"Deceiver," commented the lady calmly. "Why can't you men _ever_ be
candid?"
Surprise merged into some annoyance. "What do you mean?" he asked
bluntly.
"Oh, but two can play at that game," she assured him spiritedly. "If you
won't be open with me, why should I tell all I know?"
"I'm sure I don't know what you're driving at, Mrs. Ilkington."
"Would it improve your understanding"--she threatened him gaily with a
gem-encrusted forefinger--"if I were to tell you I met a certain person
in Paris last week, who talked to me about you?"
"It would not," said he stiffly. "Who--?"
"Oh, well, if you _won't_ be frank!" Mrs. Ilkington's manner implied
that he was a bold, bad butterfly, but that she had his entomological
number, none the less. "Tell me," she changed the subject abruptly, "how
goes the _great_ play?"
"Three acts are written," he said in weariness of spirit, "the fourth--"
"But I thought you weren't to return to America until it was _quite_
finished?"
"Who told you that, please?"
"Never mind, sir! How about the fourth act?"
"I mean to write it _en voyage_," said he, perplexed. From whom could
this woman possibly have learned so much that was intimate to himself?
"You have it all mapped out, then?" she persisted.
"Oh, yes; it only needs to be put on paper."
"R'ally, then, it's true--isn't it--that the writing is the least part
of play construction?"
"Who told you that?" he asked again, this time amused.
"Oh, a _very_ prominent man," she declared; and named him.
Staff laughed. "A too implicit belief in that theory, Mrs. Ilkington,"
said he, "is responsible for the large number of perfectly good plays
that somehow never get written--to say nothing of the equally large
number of perfectly good playwrights who somehow never get anywhere."
"Clever!" screamed the lady. "But aren't you wasteful of your epigrams?"
He could cheerfully have slain her then and there; for which reason the
civil gravity he preserved was all the more commendable.
"And now," he persisted, "won't you tell me with whom you were
discussing me in Paris?"