Part 5

An anger that was almost paralyzing, a sense of the utter impotence of words, drove John in silence from the room. He left the house by the back door, passed quickly through the orchard, where the tangled moonlight lay upon the ground in strange, fantastic shadows; across the narrow strip of field, a field now of golden stubble; up the rough ascent, across the road, and higher still up the hill which looked down upon the farm-buildings and the churchyard.

He sat grimly down upon a great boulder, filled with a hateful sense of unwreaked passion, yet with a queer thankfulness in his heart that he had escaped the miasma of evil thoughts which Stephen's words seemed to have created. The fancy seized him to face these half-veiled suggestions of his brother's, so far as they concerned himself and his life during the last few months.

Stephen was right. This woman who had dropped from the clouds for those few brief hours had played strange havoc with John's thoughts and his whole outlook upon life. The coming of harvest, the care of his people, his sports, his cricket, the early days upon the grouse moors, had all suddenly lost their interest for him. Life had become a task. The echo of her half-mocking, half-challenging words was always in his ears.

He sat with his head resting upon his hands, looking steadfastly across the valley below. Almost at his feet lay the little church with its graveyard, the long line of stacks and barns, the laborers' cottages, the bailiff's house, the whole little colony around which his life seemed centered. The summer moonlight lay upon the ground almost like snow. He could see the sheaves of wheat standing up in the most distant of the cornfields. Beyond was the dark gorge toward which he had looked so many nights at this hour.

Across the viaduct there came a blaze of streaming light, a serpentlike trail, a faintly heard whistle--the Scottish Express on its way southward toward London. His eyes followed it out of sight. He found himself thinking of the passengers who would wake the next morning in London. He felt himself suddenly acutely conscious of his isolation. Was there not something almost monastic in the seclusion which had become a passion with Stephen, and which had its grip, too, upon him--a waste of life, a burying of talents?

He rose to his feet. The half-formed purpose of weeks held him now, definite and secure. He knew that this pilgrimage of his to the hilltop, his rapt contemplation of the little panorama which had become so dear to him, was in a sense valedictory.

* * * * *

After all, two more months passed before the end came, and it came then without a moment's warning. It was a little past midday when John drove slowly through the streets of Market Ketton in his high dogcart, exchanging salutations right and left with the tradespeople, with farmers brought into town by the market, with acquaintances of all sorts and conditions. More than one young woman from the shop-windows or the pavements ventured to smile at him, and the few greetings he received from the wives and daughters of his neighbors were as gracious as they could possibly be made. John almost smiled once, in the act of raising his hat, as he realized how completely the whole charm of the world, for him, seemed to lie in one woman's eyes.

At the crossways, where he should have turned up to the inn, he paused while a motor-car passed. It contained a woman, who was talking to her host. She was not in the least like Louise, and yet instinctively he knew that she was of the same world. The perfection of her white-serge costume, her hat so smartly worn, the half-insolent smile, the little gesture with which she raised her hand--something about her unlocked the floodgates.

Market Ketton had seemed well enough a few minutes ago. John had felt a healthy appetite for his midday meal, and a certain interest concerning a deal of barley upon which he was about to engage. And now another world had him in its grip. He flicked the mare with his whip, turned away from the inn, and galloped up to the station, keeping pace with the train whose whistle he had heard. Standing outside was a local horse-dealer of his acquaintance.

"Take the mare back for me to Peak Hall, will you, Jenkins, or send one of your lads?" he begged. "I want to catch this train."

The man assented with pleasure--it paid to do a kindness for a Strangewey. John passed through the ticket-office to the platform, where the train was waiting, threw open the door of a carriage, and flung himself into a corner seat. The whistle sounded. The adventure of his life had begun at last.

VII

The great French dramatist, dark, pale-faced, and corpulent, stood upon the extreme edge of the stage, brandishing his manuscript in his hand. From close at hand, the stage manager watched him anxiously. For the third time M. Graillot was within a few inches of the orchestra-well.

"If you would pardon me, M. Graillot," he ventured timidly, "the footlights are quite unprotected, as you see."

Graillot glanced behind him and promptly abandoned his dangerous position.

"It is you, ladies and gentlemen," he declared, shaking his manuscript vigorously at the handful of people upon the stage, "who drive me into forgetfulness and place me in the danger from which our friend here has just rescued me. Do I not best know the words and the phrases which will carry the messages of my play across the footlights? Who is to judge, ladies and gentlemen--you or I?"

He banged the palm of his left hand with the rolled-up manuscript and looked at them all furiously. A slight, middle-aged man, clean-shaven, with a single eyeglass, and features very well known to the theatergoing world, detached himself a little from the others.

"No one indeed, dear M. Graillot," he admitted, "could possibly know these things so well as you; but, on the other hand, when you write in your study at Fontainebleau you write for a quicker-minded public than ours. The phrase which would find its way at once to the brain of the French audience needs, shall I say, just a little amplification to carry equal weight across the footlights of my theater. I will admit that we are dealing with a translation which is, in its way, not sufficiently literal, but our friend Shamus here has pointed out to me the difficulties. The fact is, M. Graillot, that some of the finest phrases in your work are untranslatable."

"There are times," the dramatist asserted, moistening his lips vigorously with his tongue, "when I regret that I ever suffered Mr. Shamus or anybody else to attempt to translate my inimitable play into a language wholly inadequate to express its charm and subtlety!"

"Quite so," the actor remarked sympathetically; "but still, since the deed has been done, M. Graillot, and since we are going to produce the result in the course of a fortnight or so, or lose a great deal of money, don't you think that we had all better try our utmost to insure the success of the production?"

"The only success I care for," Graillot thundered, "is an artistic success!"

"With Miss Maurel playing your leading part, M. Graillot," the actor-manager declared, "not to speak of a company carefully selected to the best of my judgment, I think you may venture to anticipate even that."

The dramatist bowed hurriedly to Louise.

"You recall to me a fact," he said gallantly, "which almost reconciles me to this diabolical travesty of some of my lines. Proceed, then--proceed! I will be as patient as possible."

The stage manager shouted out some directions from his box. A gentleman in faultless morning clothes, who seemed to have been thoroughly enjoying the interlude, suddenly adopted the puppetlike walk of a footman. Other actors, who had been whispering together in the wings, came back to their places. Louise advanced alone, a little languidly, to the front of the stage. At the first sound of her voice M. Graillot, nodding his head vigorously, was soothed.

Her speech was a long one. It appeared that she had been arraigned before a company of her relatives, assembled to comment upon her misdeeds. She wound up with a passionate appeal to her husband, Mr. Miles Faraday, who had made an unexpected appearance. M. Graillot's face, as she concluded, was wreathed in smiles.

"Ah!" he cried. "You have lifted us all up! Now I feel once more the inspiration. _Mademoiselle_, I kiss your hand," he went on. "It is you who still redeem my play. You bring back the spirit of it to me. In you I see the embodiment of my _Therese_."

Miles Faraday gave a little sigh of relief and glanced gratefully toward Louise. She nodded back to him and gave her hand to the Frenchman, who held it to his lips.

"You flatter me, M. Graillot," she said. "It is simply that I feel the force of your beautiful words. _Therese_ is a wonderful conception! As to those disputed passages--well, I feel myself in a very difficult position. Artistically, I am entirely in accord with you, and yet I understand exactly what Mr. Faraday means from the commercial point of view. Let us submit the matter to the prince. He knows something of both sides of the question."

The Prince of Seyre, who was seated in the orchestra-leader's chair, looked reproachfully toward Louise.

"Is this fair?" he protested. "Remember that I am more than half a Frenchman, and that I am one of our friend's most faithful disciples. I realize the delicacy of the situation, and I understand Mr. Faraday's point of view. I tell you frankly that the thought of an empty theater appals me. It is not the money--I am sure you all know that--but there isn't a single man or woman in the world who can do his best unless he or she plays to a full house. Somehow or other, we must secure our audience."

"It really comes to this," Faraday intervened. "Shall we achieve a purely artistic triumph and drive the people away? Or shall we--at the expense, I admit, of some of the finest passages in M. Graillot's superb drama--compromise the matter and keep our box-office open? In a more humble way I hope I also may call myself an artist; and yet not only must I live myself, but I have a staff of employees dependent upon me."

Graillot waved his hand.

"So! No more!" he exclaimed grandiloquently. "The affair is finished. My consent is given. Delete the lines! As to the scene laid in the bedroom of _madame_, to-night I shall take up my pen. By noon to-morrow I will give you a revision which will puff out the cheeks of the Philistines with satisfaction. Have no fear, _cher ami_ Faraday! Mothers shall bring their unmarried daughters to see our play. They shall all watch it without a blush. If there is anything to make the others think, it shall be beneath the surface. It shall be for the great artist whom it is my supreme joy to watch," he went on, bowing to Louise, "to act and express the real truth of my ideas through the music of innocent words."

"Then all is arranged," Miles Faraday concluded briskly. "We will leave the second act until tomorrow; then M. Graillot will bring us his revision. We will proceed now to the next act. Stand back a little, if you please, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Maurel, will you make your entrance?"

Louise made no movement. Her eyes were fixed upon a certain shadowy corner of the wings. Overwrought as she had seemed a few minutes ago, with the emotional excitement of her long speech, there was now a new and curious expression upon her face. She seemed to be looking beyond the gloomy, unlit spaces of the theater into some unexpected land.

Curiously enough, the three people there most interested in her--the prince, Graillot, and her friend, Sophy Gerard--each noticed the change. The little fair-haired girl, who owed her small part in the play to Louise, quitted her chair to follow the direction of her friend's eyes. Faraday, with the frown of an actor-manager resenting an intrusion, gazed in the same direction.

To Sophy, the newcomer was simply the handsomest young man she had ever seen in her life. To Faraday he represented nothing more nor less than the unwelcome intruder. The prince alone, with immovable features, but with a slight contraction of his eyebrows, gazed with distrust, almost with fear, unaccountable yet disturbing, at the tall hesitating figure that stood just off the stage.

Louise only knew that she was amazed at herself, amazed to find the walls of the theater falling away from her. She forgot the little company of her friends by whom she was surrounded. She forgot the existence of the famous dramatist who hung upon her words, and the close presence of the prince. Her feet no longer trod the dusty boards of the theater. She was almost painfully conscious of the perfume of apple-blossom.

"You!" she exclaimed, stretching out her hands. "Why do you not come and speak to me? I am here!"

John came out upon the stage. The French dramatist, with his hands behind his back, made swift mental notes of an interesting situation. He saw the coming of a man who stood like a giant among them, sunburnt, buoyant with health, his eyes bright with the wonder of his unexpected surroundings; a man in whose presence every one else seemed to represent an effete and pallid type of humanity.

The dramatist and the prince were satisfied, however, with one single glance at the newcomer. Afterward, their whole regard was focused upon Louise. The same thought was in the mind of both of them--the same fear!

VIII

Those first few sentences, spoken in the midst of a curious little crowd of strangers, seemed to John, when he thought of his long waiting, almost piteously inadequate. Louise, recognizing the difficulty of the situation, swiftly recovered her composure. She was both tactful and gracious.

"Do tell me how you got in here," she said. "No one is allowed to pass the stage door at rehearsal times. Mr. Faraday, to whom I will introduce you in a moment, is a perfect autocrat; and Mr. Mullins, our stage manager, is even worse."

"I just asked for you," John explained. "The doorkeeper told me that you were engaged, but I persuaded him to let me come in."

She shook her head.

"Bribery!" she declared accusingly.

"I heard your voice, and after that it was hard to go away. I'm afraid I ought to have waited outside."

Louise turned to Miles Faraday, who was looking a little annoyed.

"Mr. Faraday," she said appealingly, "Mr. Strangewey comes from the country--he is, in fact, the most complete countryman I have ever met in my life. He comes from Cumberland, and he once--well, very nearly saved my life. He knows nothing about theaters, and he hasn't the least idea of the importance of a rehearsal. You won't mind if we put him somewhere out of the way till we have finished, will you?"

"After such an introduction," Faraday said in a tone of resignation, "Mr. Strangewey would be welcome at any time."

"There's a dear man!" Louise exclaimed. "Let me introduce him quickly. Mr. John Strangewey--Mr. Miles Faraday, M. Graillot, Miss Sophy Gerard, my particular little friend. The prince you already know, although you may not recognize him trying to balance himself on that absurd stool."

John bowed in various directions, and Faraday, taking him good-naturedly by the arm, led him to a garden-seat at the back of the stage.

"There!" he said. "You are one of the most privileged persons in London. You shall hear the finish of our rehearsal. There isn't a press man in London I'd have near the place."

"Very kind of you, I'm sure," John replied. "Is this, may I ask, the play that you are soon going to produce?"

"Three weeks from next Monday, I hope," Faraday told him. "Don't attempt to judge by anything you hear this afternoon. We are just deciding upon some cuts. See you later. You may smoke, if you like."

Twenty-four hours away from his silent hills, John looked out with puzzled eyes from his dusty seat among ropes and pulleys and leaning fragments of scenery. What he saw and heard seemed to him, for the most part, a meaningless tangle of gestures and phrases. The men and women in fashionable clothes, moving about before that gloomy space of empty auditorium, looked more like marionettes than creatures of flesh and blood, drawn this way and that at the bidding of the stout, masterly Frenchman, who was continually muttering exclamations and banging the manuscript upon his hand.

He kept his eyes fixed upon Louise. He told himself that he was in her presence at last. As the moments passed, it became more and more difficult for him to realize the actuality of the scene upon which he was looking. It seemed like a dream-picture, with unreal men and women moving about aimlessly, saying strange words.

Then there came a moment which brought a tingle into his blood, which plunged his senses into hot confusion. He rose to his feet. Faraday was sitting down, and Louise was resting both her hands upon his shoulders.

"Is there nothing I can be to you, then, Edmund?" she asked, her voice vibrating with a passion which he found it hard to believe was not real.

Faraday turned slowly in his chair. He held out his arms.

"One thing," he murmured.

John had moved half a step forward when he felt the prince's eyes fixed upon him, and was conscious of a sudden sense of ignorance, almost of uncouthness. It was a play which they were rehearsing, of course! It was a damnable thing to see Louise taken into that cold and obviously unreal embrace, but it was only a play. It was part of her work.

John resumed his seat and folded his arms. With the embrace had fallen an imaginary curtain, and the rehearsal was over. They were all crowded together, talking, in the center of the stage. The prince, who had stepped across the footlights, made his way to where John was sitting.

"So you have deserted Cumberland for a time?" he courteously inquired.

"I came up last night," John replied.

"You are making a long stay?"

John hesitated. He felt that no one knew less of his movements than he himself. His eyes had wandered to where Louise and Graillot were talking.

"I can scarcely tell yet. I have made no plans."

"London, at this season of the year," the prince observed, "is scarcely at its best."

John smiled.

"I am afraid," he said, "that I am not critical. It is eight years since I was here last, on my way down from Oxford."

"You have been abroad, perhaps?" the prince inquired.

"I have not been out of Cumberland during the whole of that time," John confessed.

The prince, after a moment's incredulous stare, laughed softly to himself.

"You are a very wonderful person, Mr. Strangewey," he declared. "I have heard of your good fortune. If I can be of any service to you during your stay in town," he added politely, "please command me."

"You are very kind," John replied gratefully.

Louise broke away from the little group and came across toward them.

"Free at last!" she exclaimed. "Now let us go out and have some tea."

They made their way down the little passage and out into the sudden blaze of the sunlit streets. Two cars were drawn up outside the stage door.

"The Carlton or Rumpelmayer's?" asked the prince, who had overtaken them upon the pavement.

"The Carlton, I think," Louise decided. "We can get a quiet table there inside the restaurant. You bring Sophy, will you, Eugene? I am going to take possession of Mr. Strangewey."

The prince, with a little bow, pointed to the door of his limousine, which a footman was holding open. Louise led John to a smaller car which was waiting in the rear.

"The Carlton," she told the man, as he arranged the rugs. "And now," she added, turning to John, "why have you come to London? How long are you going to stay? What are you going to do? And--most important of all--in what spirit have you come?"

John breathed a little sigh of contentment. They were moving slowly down a back street to take their place in the tide of traffic which flooded the main thoroughfares.

"That sounds so like you," he said. "I came up last night, suddenly. I have no idea how long I am going to stay; I have no idea what I am going to do. As for the spirit in which I have come--well, I should call it an inquiring one."

"A very good start," Louise murmured approvingly, "but still a little vague!"

"Then I will do away with all vagueness. I came to see you," John confessed bluntly.

"Dear me!" she exclaimed, looking at him with a little smile. "How downright you are!"

"Country methods," he reminded her.

"Don't overdo it," she begged.

"The truth--" he began.

"Has to be handled very carefully," she said, interrupting him. "The truth is either beautiful or crude, and the people who meddle with such a wonderful thing need a great deal of tact. You have come to see me, you say. Very well, then, I will be just as frank. I have been hoping that you would come!"

"You can't imagine how good it is to hear you say that," he declared.

"Mind," she went on, "I have been hoping it for more reasons than one. You have come to realize, I hope, that it is your duty to try to see a little more of life than you possibly can leading a patriarchal existence among your flocks and herds."

"That may be so," John assented. "I have often thought of our conversation. I don't know, even now, whether you were right or wrong. I only know that since you went away I have felt something of the unrest with which you threatened me. I want to settle the matter one way or the other. I want to try, for a little time, what it is like to live in the crowded places, to be near you, to see, if I may, more of you and your way of living."

They were silent for several moments.

"I thought you would come," Louise said at last; "and I am glad, but even in these first few minutes I want to say something to you. If you wish to succeed in your object, and really understand the people you meet here and the life they lead, don't be like your brother--too quick to judge. Do not hug your prejudices too tightly. You will come across many problems, many situations which will seem strange to you. Do not make up your mind about anything in a hurry."

"I will remember that," he promised. "You must remember, though, that I don't expect ever to become a convert. I believe I am a countryman, bred and born. Still, there are some things that I want to understand, if I can, and, more than anything else--I want to see you!"

She faced his direct speech this time with more deliberation.

"Tell me exactly why."

"If I could tell you that," he replied simply, "I should be able to answer for myself the riddle which has kept me awake at night for weeks and months, which has puzzled me more than anything else in life has ever done."

"You really have thought of me, then?"

"Didn't you always know that I should?"

"Perhaps," she admitted. "Anyhow, I always felt that we should meet again, that you would come to London. The problem is," she added, smiling, "what to do with you now you are here."

"I haven't come to be a nuisance," he assured her. "I just want a little help from you."

She became indiscreet. She looked at him with a little smile at the corners of her lips.

"Nothing else?" she asked, almost under her breath.

"At the end of it all, yes," he answered simply. "I want to understand because it is your world. I want to feel myself nearer to you. I want--"

She gripped at his arm suddenly. She knew well enough that she had deliberately provoked his words, but there was a look in her face almost of fear.

"Don't let us be too serious all at once," she begged quickly. "If you have one fault, my dear big friend from the country," she went on, with a swiftly assumed gaiety, "it is that you are too serious for your years. Sophy and I between us must try to cure you of that! You see, we have arrived."