1
Mrs. Graham and Mary and Rachel Wynne dined with them on the first night
of "The Magic Casement." Rachel, fresh from a Care Committee, composed
mostly of members of the Charity Organisation Society and the wives of
prosperous tradesmen, was inclined to tell the world what she thought of
it, but they diverted her mind from the iniquities of the Care Committee
by congratulating her on her engagement to Roger. She blushed and gave
her thanks in stammers, looking with bright, proud eyes at Roger; and
when they saw how human she was, they forgot her hard efficiency and her
sociological angers, and liked her. Gilbert urged her to tell them tales
of the C.O.S. and the Care Committee, and rejoiced loudly when she
described how she had discomfited a large, granitic woman ... the
Mayor's wife ... who had committed a flagrant breach of the law in her
anxiety to penalise some unfortunate children whose father was an
agitator. "If I were poor," Rachel said, "I'd hit a C.O.S. person on
sight! I'd hit it simply because it was a C.O.S. person! That would be
evidence against it!" She enjoyed calling a C.O.S. person, "it," and
Henry felt that perhaps some of the difficulty with the Mayor's wife was
due to the pleasure that Rachel took in rubbing her up the wrong way. He
suggested that tactful treatment....
"You can't be tactful with that kind of person," she asserted instantly.
"You can only be angry. You see, they love to badger poor people. It's
sheer delight to them to ask impertinent questions. There's a big streak
of Torquemada in them. They'd have been Inquisitors if they'd been born
in Spain when there were Inquisitors!" She paused for a second or two,
and then went on rapidly. "I never thought of that before. Why, of
course, that's what they are. They've been reincarnated ... you know,
transmigration of souls ... and that fat woman, Mrs. Smeale...." Mrs.
Smeale was the Mayor's wife ... "was an Inquisitor before she was ...
was dug up again. I can see her beastly big face in a cowl, and hot
pincers in her hands, plucking poor Protestants' flesh off their bones
... and she's doing that now, using all the rotten rules and regulations
as hot pincers to pluck the spirit out of the poor! Of course, she does
it all for the best! So did the Inquisitors! She doesn't want to
undermine the moral character of the poor, and they didn't want to let
the poor heretic imperil his soul.... I'd like to inquisit her!..."
"There isn't a word 'inquisit,' Rachel!" said Roger.
"Well, there ought to be," she answered.
Henry pictured her, in her committee room, surrounded by hard women,
opposing herself to them, fighting for people who were not of her class
against people who were, and it seemed to him that Rachel was very
valiant, even if she were tactless, much more valiant than he could be.
Rachel belonged to the fearless, ungracious, blunt people who are not to
be deterred from their purpose by ostracism or abuse, and Henry realised
that such courage as hers must inevitably be accompanied by
aggressiveness, a harsh insistence on one's point of view, and worst of
all, a surrender of social charm and ease and the kindly regard of one's
friends. "I couldn't do that," he thought to himself. It was easy enough
to sneer at such people, to call them "cranks," but indisputably they
had the heroic spirit, the will to endure obloquy for their opinions. "I
suppose," he reflected, "the reason why one feels so angry with such
people is partly that nine times out of ten they're in the right, and
partly that ten times out of ten they've got the pluck we haven't got!"
And he remembered that Witterton, a journalist whom he had met at the
office of the _Morning Record_, had climbed on to the plinth in
Trafalgar Square during the Boer War and made a speech in denunciation
of Chamberlain and the Rand lords, and had been badly mauled by the mob.
"By God, that's courage!" he murmured. That was the sort of person
Rachel was. He could see her opposing herself to mobs, but he could not
see himself doing so. Probably, he thought, he would be on the fringe of
the crowd, mildly deprecating violence and tactlessness....
He came out of his ruminations to hear Mrs. Graham telling Rachel how
pleased she was to hear that Roger and she were engaged. "My dear," she
said, "I'm very glad!" and then she kissed Rachel.
"Come here, Roger," she added, and when he had ambled awkwardly up to
her, she took his head in her hands and kissed him too....
"I've a jolly good mind to get engaged myself," said Gilbert.
"Well, why don't you?" Mrs. Graham retorted.
"I would, only I keep on forgetting about it," he answered. "Couldn't
you kiss me 'Good-luck' to my play?"
"I could," she replied, and kissed him.
Then they insisted that she should kiss them all, and she did as they
insisted. She was very gracious and very charming and her eyes were
bright with her pleasure in their youth and spirits ... so bright that
presently she cried a little ... and then they all talked quickly and
kicked one another's shins under the table in order to enforce tactful
behaviour.
2
They sat in one of the two large boxes of the Pall Mall Theatre. Gilbert
was nervous and restless, and after the play began, he retreated to the
back of the box and sat down in a corner.
"What's up, Gilbert?" Henry whispered to him. "Are you ill?"
"Ill!" Gilbert exclaimed, looking up at Henry with a whimsical smile.
"Man, Quinny, I'm dying! Go away like a good chap and let me die in
peace. Tell all my friends that my last words were...."
Henry went back to his seat beside Mary and whispered to her that
Gilbert was too nervous and agitated to be sociable ... "some sort of
stage fright!..." and they pretended not to notice that he was huddled
in the darkest corner of the box. "Thank goodness," Henry said to the
others, "a novelist doesn't get a storm of nerves on the day of
publication!" Leaning over the edge of the box, he could see Lady Cecily
sitting in the stalls, with Jimphy by her side ... and for a while he
forgot the play and Mary and Gilbert's agitation. She was sitting
forward, looking intently at the stage, and as he watched her, she
laughed and turned to Jimphy as if she would share her pleasure with
him, but Jimphy, lying back in his stall, was fiddling with his
programme, utterly uninterested. She glanced up at the box, her eyes
meeting his, and smiled at him.
"Who is it?" said Mary, leaning towards him.
"Oh ... Lady Cecily Jayne!" he answered, discomposed by her question.
"She's very beautiful, isn't she?"
"Yes."
They turned again to the stage and were silent until the end of the
first act. There was a burst of laughter, and then the curtain
descended, to rise again in quick response to the applause.
"Cheering a chap at his funeral!" said Gilbert, groaning with delight as
he listened to the shouts and handclaps.
They turned to him and offered their congratulations.
"Five curtain-calls," said Roger. "Very satisfactory!"
"It's splendid, Gilbert," Mrs. Graham exclaimed. "I'm sure it'll be a
great success!"
"Oh, dear, O Lord, I wish it were over!" Gilbert replied.
"Let's fill him with whisky," said Ninian, rising and taking hold of
Gilbert's arm, and he and Henry took him and led him to the bar where
they met Jimphy, looking like a lost rabbit.
"Hilloa, Jimphy!" they exclaimed, and he turned gleefully to welcome
them. Here at all events was something he could comprehend. He
congratulated Gilbert. "Jolly good, old chap! Have a drink," he said,
and insisted that they should join him at the bar. "Of course," he added
privately to Henry, "this sort of stuff isn't really in my line ...
jolly good and all that, of course ... but still it's not in my line.
All the same, a chap has to congratulate a chap. Oh, Cecily wants you to
go and talk to her. You know where she is, don't you?"
He turned to listen to Ninian who was describing the accident which had
happened when the _Gigantic_ started on her first trip to America. "She
jolly near sank a cruiser," he was saying as Henry moved away from the
bar. "That was the second accident. The first time, she broke from her
moorings...."
He pushed his way through the crowd of drinking and gossiping men, and
entered the stalls. Lady Cecily saw him coming, and she beckoned to him.
"Who is that nice girl in the box?" she asked, as he sat down in
Jimphy's seat. "She sat beside you...."
"Oh, Ninian's sister," he replied. "Mary Graham."
"She's very pretty, isn't she?"
"Yes...."
He would have said more, but it suddenly struck him as comical that Lady
Cecily should speak of Mary almost in the words that Mary had used when
she spoke of Lady Cecily. He looked up at the box and saw that Mary was
talking to her mother, and something in her attitude sent a pang through
his heart.
"I _do_ love Mary," he said to himself, "but somehow ... somehow I love
Cecily too!"
Lady Cecily was speaking to him and he turned to listen.
"I want you to introduce me to Ninian's sister," she said.
"Yes," he answered reluctantly, though he could not have said why he was
reluctant to introduce her to Mary.
"After the next act," she went on, and he nodded his head.
Then Jimphy returned, and Henry got up and left her, and hurried back to
the box. The second act had begun when he reached it, and he tiptoed to
his seat and sat down in silence. Mary looked round at him, smiling, and
then looked back at the stage, and again he felt that odd reluctance to
bring Lady Cecily and her together.
3
At the end of the second act, he turned to Mary and said, "Lady Cecily
wants to be introduced to you. I said I'd bring her here after this
act!"
"Do," Mary answered.
As he walked towards the door of the box, he remembered Gilbert and he
bent towards him and said quietly, "Oh, Gilbert, I'm going to fetch Lady
Cecily. She wants to talk to Mary!..."
"Righto!" Gilbert replied, without looking up.
Henry hesitated. "You ... you don't mind, do you?" he said, and then
wished that he had remained silent.
"Mind!" Gilbert looked up. "Why should I mind?"
"I thought perhaps ... but of course if you don't mind, that's all
right!"
He hurried out of the box, feeling that he had intruded into private
places. He had intended to be considerate and had achieved only the
appearance of prying. "That's like me!" he thought, as he descended the
stairs that led to the stalls. "I wonder why it is that I'm full of
sympathy and understanding and tact in my books, and such a clumsy fool
in life!"
He entered the stalls, and as he did so, Lady Cecily rose to join him.
Jimphy had already gone to the bar. He held the curtain for her and she
passed through. "Isn't it clever?" she said, speaking of the play, and
he nodded his head. The passage leading up from the stalls was full of
chattering people, but when they reached the narrow corridor which led
to the box, there was no one about....
"Cecily!" he said in a low voice.
"Yes, Paddy!" she answered, looking back over her shoulder.
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him.
"Some one will see you," she said.
"No, they won't," he replied, "and I don't care...."
He kissed her ardently. "My dear!" he murmured with his lips on hers.
She pushed him from her. "You _are_ a fool," she said.
"I couldn't help it!"
Their voices were low lest the people in the box should hear them.
"You must never do that again," she said. "I'd never have forgiven you
if any one had seen us!"
"What are you afraid of, Cecily?" he asked.
She made a gesture of despair. "Haven't you _any_ sense?" she said.
She turned to go towards the box again, but he caught hold of her hand
and held her.
"Cecily," he whispered, "you know I love you, don't you?"
"Yes, yes," she answered impatiently, snatching her hand from his, "but
you needn't tell everybody about it!"
"And you love me, too. Don't you?"
"Let's go and join the others!..."