_DID YOU SAY MRS.?_
The end of another fortnight found Arthur still at Hilsey, but on the
eve of leaving it for a time at least. Another summons had reached him,
one which he could not disregard. His mother wrote, affectionately
reproaching him for delaying his visit to Malvern. "You promised us to
come before this. Besides I'm not very well, and you'll cheer me up. You
mustn't altogether forsake us for the other branch of the family!"
Arthur recognised his duty, but with a reluctance of which he was
ashamed. Common disaster had drawn the party at Hilsey more closely
together. Judith and Arthur, working hand in hand to "make things go,"
had become firm friends, though they were apt to spar and wrangle still.
The little girl--she knew by now that her mother's visit was to be a
long one--responded to the compassionate tenderness evoked by a
misfortune which she herself did not yet understand; she gained
confidence from marks of love and, as she claimed affection more boldly,
elicited it in ampler measure.
Freed from a struggle to which he was morbidly conscious of being
unequal, Godfrey Lisle showed his better side. Aggressive courage was
what he lacked and knew that he lacked; he was not without fortitude to
endure the pain of a blow that had fallen--especially when he could be
sure it was the last! He was at peace now; the worst possible had
happened--and, lo, it was not unendurable! There were compensations; he
was not humiliated any more, and the sad leak in his finances--it had
threatened even his tenure of Hilsey itself--could be stopped. Though he
was still fussy, self-important over trifles, sometimes ridiculous, and
very dependent on his stronger kinsfolk, he was more amiable, less
secretive of his feelings, free from sulks and grievances. The gentleman
in him came out, both in his bearing towards those about him and in the
attitude he adopted towards Bernadette herself. He spoke of her as
seldom as he could but without rancour, and in regard to future
arrangements put himself at her disposal. When letters came from Oliver
Wyse's lawyers, acting on instructions received from the voyagers on
summer seas, he caused Arthur to reply for him that he would give her
the freedom she desired, and would endeavour to meet whatever might be
her wishes in regard to Margaret. He was scrupulous--and even
meticulous--over setting aside all her personal belongings to await her
orders. He declared himself ready to consider any pecuniary arrangement
which might be thought proper; some relics of his old pride in lavishly
supplying all her requirements seemed to survive in his mind, side by
side with his relief at the thought of paying off his mortgage.
To Arthur the quiet after the storm brought a more sober view of himself
and of his life, of what he had done and what had happened to him. His
eyes saw more clearly for what they were both the high-flying adoration
and the tempestuous gust of passion which jealousy had raised. A
critical and healthy distrust of himself and his impulses began
gradually to displace the bitter and morbid self-contempt of the first
hours and days after the disaster. He must still grieve with the
forsaken worshipper of the smoking-room; he could not yet forget the
pangs of the baffled lover; but a new man was coming to birth in
him--one who, if he still grieved and sighed, could come near to smiling
too at these extravagant gentlemen with their idolising dreams and gusty
passions. Rueful and bitter the smile might be, but it was tonic. It
helped to set devotion, passion, and catastrophe in their true places
and to assign to them their real proportions. In it was the dawn of a
recognition that he was still no more than on the threshold of a man's
experience.
Neither was it a bad thing perhaps that another and very practical
trouble began to press him hard. Though he was living in free quarters
now, the bills contracted during his great London season began to come
tumbling in, many for the second or third time. "To account rendered"
was a legend with which he was becoming familiar to the point of
disgust. The five hundred pounds was running very low; the diminished
dividends could not meet his deficit. When Godfrey talked finance to
him, as he often did, he was inclined to retort that there were finances
in a more desperate condition than those of the estate of Hilsey and
possessing no such new-born prospects of recovery--prospects born in
sore travail, it is true, but there all the same for Godfrey's
consolation.
But there was the farce! That persevering project emerged on the horizon
again. It was in full rehearsal now; it was due in three weeks' time: it
had got a third act at last, Mr. Claud Beverley and Mr. Langley
Etheringham having apparently assuaged their differences. It had even
got a name--a name, as Joe Halliday wrote in his enthusiasm, as superior
to the name of _Help Me Out Quickly_ as the play itself was to that
bygone masterpiece. Arthur told Judith the name and, in spite of that
resolution of his about relying on his own judgment, awaited her opinion
anxiously. After all, in this case it was not his judgment, but,
presumably, Mr. Claud Beverley's.
"'_Did You Say Mrs.?_' That's what you're going to call it, is it?"
"It's what they're going to call it. It's not my invention, you know."
"Well, I should think it must be vulgar enough, anyhow," said Judith.
"Oh, vulgar be hanged! That doesn't matter. Jolly good, I call it! Sort
of piques your curiosity. Why did He say Mrs.?--That's what the
public'll want to know, don't you see?"
"Or why did She say Mrs. perhaps!"
"There you are! Another puzzle! You see, you're curious yourself
directly, Judith."
"Well, yes, I am rather," Judith confessed, laughing.
"I think He said it about Her--when she wasn't," Arthur maintained.
"I think She said it about herself," urged Judith. "Oh, of course, she
wasn't--there can't be any doubt about that."
So Judith thought well of the title--evidently she did. Arthur's
approval was fortified and grew with contemplation.
"It's corking!" he declared. "And if only Ayesha Layard's half as good
as Joe thinks----"
"If only who's half as good as----?"
"Ayesha Layard--that's our star, our leading lady. A discovery of Joe's;
he's wild about her."
"I wonder who invented her name, if you come to that!"
"Well, we'll hope for the best," said Arthur, laughing. "I shall be up a
tree, if it goes wrong."
"Not a bad thing to be up a tree sometimes; you get a good view all
round."
"Sagacious philosopher! But I can't afford to lose my money."
"Let's see, how much were you silly enough----?"
"One--thousand--pounds. No less! I can't really quite make out how I
came to do it."
"I'm sure I can't help you there, Arthur. I wasn't in your confidence."
"Never mind! In for it now! I shall get hold of Joe for lunch on my way
through town, and hear all about it."
"You might look in at the Temple too, and see how many briefs you've
missed!"
"Well, it's vacation, you know--Still I mean to settle down to that when
I get back from Malvern."
"Yes, you must. We mustn't keep you any longer. You've been very good to
stay--and it's been very good to have you here, Arthur."
"By Jove, when I think of what I expected my visit here to be, and what
it has been!"
She shook her head at him with a smile. "Then don't think of it," she
counselled. "Think of _Did You Say Mrs.?_ instead!"
The parting from Hilsey could not be achieved without some retrospects,
some drawing of contrasts, without memories bitter or seductive; that
would have demanded a mind too stoical. Yet his leave-taking was graced
and softened by their reluctance to let him go. He went not as a guest
whose sojourn under a strange roof is finished and who may chance not to
pass that way again; his going was rather as that of a son of the house
who sallies forth on his business or his ventures and, God willing,
shall come again, bringing his sheaves with him, to a home ever and
gladly open. So they all, in their ways, tried to tell him or to show
him. For their sakes, no less than for the dear sake of her who was
gone, his heart was full.
Joe Halliday bustled in to lunch at the appointed meeting-place as busy
and sanguine as ever--so busy indeed that he appeared not to have been
able to see much of _Did You Say Mrs.?_ lately. "But it's going on all
right," he added reassuringly. "We had a job over that third act, but
it's topping now. Claud had an idea that Langley liked at last, thank
heaven! It's a job to keep those two chaps from cutting one another's
throats--that's the only trouble. I expect they'll be rehearsing this
afternoon. Would you like to drop in for a bit?"
"Love it! I've never seen a rehearsal, and this'll be thrilling! My
train isn't till 4.45."
"Ayesha's divine! Look here, you mustn't make love to her. I'm doing
that myself. I mean I'm trying. That's as far as I've got." He laughed
good-humouredly, devouring rump-steak at a ruinous rate.
"How's everybody, Joe? How are the Sarradets?"
"I saw the old man only yesterday. He's in great form--so cockahoop
about this company of his that I believe he's taken on a new lease of
life."
"What company? I haven't heard about it."
"Haven't you? Why, he's turned his business into a company--mainly to
stop our young friend Raymond from playing ducks and drakes with it,
when his turn comes. It's a private company--no public issue of shares.
A few debentures for his friends--I've been looking after that side of
it for him a bit. Like some?"
"Thanks, but just at present I'm not supporting the investment market,"
smiled Arthur.
"Will be soon! So will all of us. Yes, it's all fixed--and that lucky
devil Sidney Barslow steps in as Managing Director. He's done himself
pretty well all round, has Sidney!"
"He seems to have. Is he all right?" Arthur's comment and question were
both so devoid of interest that Joe stared at him in amazement.
"I say, don't you know? Didn't anybody write and tell you? Didn't she
write? Marie, I mean. She's engaged to Sidney. Do you mean to say you
didn't know that?"
"No, nobody told me. I've been away, you see." He paused a moment.
"Rather sudden, wasn't it?"
"Well, when a stone once begins to roll down hill--!" said Joe, with a
knowing grin. "Besides he'd been very useful to them over Raymond. The
old man took no end of a fancy to him. I imagine it all somehow worked
in together. Funny she didn't write and tell you about it!"
Arthur felt that his companion was regarding him with some curiosity;
the friendship between Marie Sarradet and himself had been so well known
in the circle; whether it would become anything more had doubtless been
a matter of speculation among them. He did not mind Joe's curiosity;
better that it should be turned on this matter than on his more recent
experiences.
"I suppose she had something considerably more pressing to think about,"
he remarked with a smile.
Yet the news caused not indeed resentment or jealousy, but a vague
annoyance, based partly on vanity--the engagement was sudden, the deeper
memories of another attachment must have faded quickly--but mainly on
regret for Marie. He could not help feeling that she was throwing
herself away on a partner beneath her, unworthy of her--from family
reasons in some measure probably, or just for want of anybody better.
The Marie he had known--that side of her which her shrewd and
affectionate diplomacy had always contrived to present to the eyes whose
scrutiny she feared--the Marie whom once he had marked for his--surely
she could not easily mate with Sidney Barslow, for all the good there
was in him? He forgot that there might be another Marie whom he did not
know so well, perhaps in the end a more real, a more natural, a
preponderating one. He should not have forgotten that possibility, since
there had proved to be more than one Bernadette!
"Well, I hope they'll be very happy. I must go and see her when I'm back
in town."
"They'll do all right," Joe pronounced. "Sidney has taken a reef
in--several, in fact. He'll have a big chance at old Sarradet's place
and, if I know him, he'll use it."
"And how's Raymond going on?"
"Raymond's on appro., so to speak, both as to the business and in
another quarter, I think. Our pretty Amabel is waiting to see how he
sticks to the blue ribbon of a blameless life. The old set's rather gone
to pot, hasn't it, Arthur? The way of the world, what?"
"By Jove, it is!" sighed Arthur. Things had a way of going to pot--with
a vengeance.
The two philosophers finished their pints of beer, and set out for the
Burlington Theatre; upon entering which they shed their philosophic
character and became excited adventurers.
Mr. Langley Etheringham was taking the company through the first act;
they were in the middle of it when Joe, having piloted Arthur through
dark and dirty ways, deposited him in the third row of the stalls. The
well-known "producer" was a shortish man with a bald head, a red
moustache, and fiery eyes. He was an embodiment of perpetual motion. He
kept on moving his arms from the level of his thighs to that of his
head, as though he were lifting a heavy weight in his hands, and
accompanied the action by a constant quick murmur of "Pick it up, pick
it up, pick it up!" He broke off once or twice to observe sadly, "Not a
funeral, my boy, not a funeral!" but he was soon back at his
weight-lifting again.
"Langley's a great believer in pace, especially in the first act," Joe
whispered. Arthur nodded sagaciously. Mr. Etheringham fascinated him; he
could have watched him contentedly for a long while, as one can watch
the untiring and incredibly swift action of some machine. But nobody on
the stage seemed to take much notice. Some were reading their parts all
the time, some were trying to do without their written parts. The
leading man--a tall, stout, grey-haired man in double eyeglasses--just
mumbled his words indifferently, but was terribly anxious about his
"crosses." "Where's my cross?" "Is this my cross?" "I crossed here this
morning." "I don't like this cross, Langley." His life seemed compact of
crosses.
Arthur could not gather much of what the first act was about; he had
missed the "exposition"--so at least Joe informed him; the confusion was
to an inexperienced eye considerable, the dialogue hard to hear owing to
Mr. Etheringham's exhortations and the leading man's crosses. But he did
not mind much; he was keenly interested in the scene and the people. It
did, however, appear that the four characters now taking part in the
action were expecting a fifth, a woman, and that her entrance was to be
the turning-point of the act. Mr. Etheringham varied his appeal. "Keep
it up, keep it up, keep it up!" he implored. "Keep it up for her,
Willie, keep it _Up_!" He waved his hands furiously, then brought them
suddenly to rest, stretched out on each side of him. "_Now!_"
Everybody was still; even the leading man did not want to cross.
Miss Ayesha Layard entered. It was evidently a great moment. The others
stiffened in the rigidity of surprise. Miss Layard looked round,
smiling. The leading man began to mumble. Mr. Etheringham peremptorily
stopped him. "Hold it, Willie, hold it--I told you to hold it, man!
It'll stand another five seconds!" With poised hands he held them
planted and speechless. "Now!"
Joe heaved a sigh. "Pretty good, don't you think so?"
"Splendid!" said Arthur. "I suppose she's really somebody else, or--or
they think she is?"
"Ought to be, anyhow," Joe whispered back with a cunning smile.
Miss Ayesha Layard was a small lady, very richly dressed. She had a
turned-up nose, wide-open blue eyes, and an expression of intense
innocence. She did not look more than seventeen, and no doubt could look
even younger when required. In one hand she held the script of her part,
in the other a large sandwich with a bite out of it; and she was
munching.
"No, no!" cried Mr. Etheringham, suddenly spying the sandwich, "I will
not go on while you're eating!"
"But I'm so hungry, Mr. Etheringham!" she pleaded in a sweet childish
voice. "It's past three and I've had no lunch."
"Lunch, lunch, always lunch! No sooner do we begin to get going than
it's lunch!"
She stood still, munching, smiling, appealing to him with wide-open
candid eyes. He flung himself crossly into a chair. "Take a
quarter-of-an-hour then! After that we'll go back and run straight
through the act." Miss Layard dimpled in a smile. He broke out again.
"But go on while you're eating I won't!"
On receiving their brief respite the men on the stage had scuttled off,
like rabbits into their holes; Miss Layard too hurried off, but soon
reappeared in the front of the house, carrying a paper bag with more
sandwiches. She sat down in the front row of the stalls, still munching
steadily.
"I'll be back in a minute," said Joe, and went and sat himself down
beside her.
A melancholy voice came from the cavernous recesses of the pit: "We
could do with a bit more life, Etheringham."
"If we get the pace and the positions now, the life'll soon come. I've
got some experience, I suppose, haven't I?"
The author emerged into view, as he replied sadly, "Oh, experience,
yes!" He did not appear disposed to allow the producer any other
qualifications for his task.
Mr. Etheringham gave him a fiery glare but no answer. Mr. Beverley saw
Arthur and came up to him. "Hullo, Lisle, have you come to see this
rot?"
"Yes, but I'm afraid I can't stay. I've a train to catch, and I've got
to get my hair cut first."
"Oh, well, you won't miss much," said Beverley resignedly, as he dropped
into the next stall.
Arthur was surprised at his mode of referring to the great work; his
attitude had been different that night at the Sarradets', when they
celebrated the formation of the Syndicate. Perhaps the author detected
his feeling, for he went on:
"Oh, it's all right of its sort. It's funny, you know, all right--it'll
go. Etheringham there swears by it, and he's a pretty good judge, in
spite of his crankiness. But--well, I've moved on since I wrote it. Life
has begun to interest me--real life, I mean, and real people, and the
way things really happen. I'm writing a play now about a woman leaving
her husband and children. I hope the Twentieth Society'll do it. Well, I
treat it like a thing that really happens, not as you see it done on the
stage or in novels."
Arthur was curious. "How do you make her do it?" he asked.
"Why, in a reasonable way--openly, after discussing the matter, as real
men and women would. None of the old elopement nonsense! Real people
don't do that."
"Well, but--er--don't people differ?"
"Not half so much as you think--not real people. Well, you'll see. Only
I wish I could get on a bit quicker. The office takes up so much of my
time. If I can make a bit out of this thing, I'll chuck the office." He
paused for a minute. "You've been away, haven't you?"
"Yes, I've been down in the country. Had some family affairs
to--er--look after." He was a little surprised that Mr. Beverley had
condescended to notice his absence.
"Going to be in town now?"
"Well, I'm off for about ten days more. Then I've got to buckle to
work--if I can get any work to buckle to, that is."
Mr. Beverley nodded thoughtfully and smiled. The next moment a loud
giggling proceeded from where Miss Layard and Joe sat. The lady rose,
saying, "I'll ask Mr. Beverley," and came towards them, Joe looking on
with a broad grin on his face. "He's not like you--he's sensible and
serious." After a quick glance over her shoulder at Joe, she addressed
the author. "Oh, Mr. Beverley, you're a literary man and all that. Tell
me, do you say 'ee-ther' or 'eye-ther'?" Her face was a picture of
innocent gravity.
"Eye-ther," replied the eminent author promptly.
"But which?"
"Eye-ther."
"Oh, but haven't you a choice?"
"I tell you I say 'eye-ther,' Miss Layard."
Joe sniggered. Arthur began to smile slowly, as the joke dawned upon
him.
"Just as it happens--or alternately--or on Sundays and week-days, or
what, Mr. Beverley?"
"I've told you three times already that I say----" He stopped, looked at
her sourly, and fell back in his stall, muttering something that sounded
very like "Damned nonsense!"
"I thought I could pull your leg!" she cried exultantly, and burst into
the merriest peal of laughter--sweet ringing laughter that set Arthur
laughing too in sympathy. She was indeed all that Joe had said when she
laughed like that. She was irresistible. If only Mr. Beverley had given
her opportunity enough for laughter, _Did you Say Mrs.?_ must surely be
a success!
She saw his eyes fixed on her in delight. "Awfully good, isn't it?" she
said. "Because you can't get out of it, whatever you answer!" Her
laughter trilled out again, clear, rich, and soft.
"First Act!" called Mr. Etheringham threateningly.
"I'd like to try it on him," she whispered. "Only he's so cross!"