The Foolish Lovers

by St. John G. Ervine

THE FIRST CHAPTER

I

The honeymoon at Ballyards had been a triumph for Eleanor. Uncle William had immediately surrendered to her, making, indeed, no pretence to resist her. She had demanded his company on a boating excursion on the Lough, and when he had turned to her, sitting behind him in the bow of the boat, and had said, "This is great health! It's the first time I've been in a boat these years and years!" she had retorted indignantly, "The first time! But why?"

"Och ... busy!" he had explained.

She had called to John, sitting with his mother in the stern, and demanded an explanation of the causes which prevented Uncle William from taking holidays like other people.

"Sure, he likes work!" said John.

"Nobody likes work to that extent," Eleanor replied, and then Mrs. MacDermott gave the explanation. "There's no one else but him to do it," she said. "Uncle Matthew had his head full of romantic dreams and John fancied himself in other ways, so Uncle William had to do it all by himself!"

John flushed, and was angry with his mother for speaking in this way before Eleanor. He felt that she was stating the case unfairly. Had he not once offered to quit from his monitorial work to help in the shop and had not his offer been firmly refused?...

"There'll be no need for Uncle William to work hard when my play is produced," he said.

"Ah, quit blethering about hard work," Uncle William exclaimed, bending to the oars. "Sure, I'd be demented mad if I hadn't my work to do. What would an old fellow like me do gallivanting up and down the shore in my bare feet, paddling like a child in the water! Have sense, do, all of you. Eleanor, I'm surprised at you trying to make a loafer out of me!"

She leant forward and pulled him suddenly backwards and he fell into the bottom of the boat. "We'll all be drowned," he shouted. "I'll cowp the boat if you assault me again!..."

"What does 'cowp' mean?" she demanded.

"In God's name, girl, where were you brought up not to know what 'cowp' means! Upset!" said he.

"Well, why don't you say upset, you horrible old Orangeman," she retorted.

"I'm no Orangeman," he giggled at her. "I wouldn't own the name!"

"You are. You are. You say your prayers every night to King William and Carson!..."

"Ah, you're the tormenting wee tory, so you are! Here, take a hold of these oars and do something for your living!"

She had changed places with Uncle William, and John felt very proud of her as he observed the skilful way in which she handled the oars. Her strokes were clean and strong and deliberate. She did not thrust the oars too deeply into the water nor did she pull them, impotently along the surface nor did she lean too heavily on one oar so that the boat was drawn too much to one side or sent ungainly to this side and to that in an exhausting effort to keep a straight course. He lay back against his mother and regarded Eleanor out of half-shut eyes. She mystified him. Her timidity when he had first spoken to her had seemed to him then to be her chief characteristic and it had caused him to feel tenderly for her: he would be her protector. But she was not always timid. He had discovered courage in her and something uncommonly like obstinacy of mind. She uttered opinions which startled him, less because of the flimsy grounds on which they were built, than because of the queer chivalry that made her utter them. She defended the weak because they were weak, whereas he would have had her defend the truth because it was the truth. The attacked had her sympathy, whether they were in the right or in the wrong, and John demanded that sympathy should be given only to those who were in the right even if they happened also to be the stronger of the contestants. He had seen her behaving with extraordinary calmness at a time when he had been certain that she would show signs of hysteria, and while he was marvelling at her imperturbability, he had heard her screaming with fright at the sight of an ear-wig. He had rushed to her help, imagining that she was in terrible danger, and had found her trembling and shuddering because this pitiful insect had crawled on to her dressing-gown.... He had been very frightened when he heard her screaming to him for help, and he suffered so strange a reaction when he discovered that her trouble was trivial that he lost his temper. "Don't be such a fool," he said, putting his foot on the ear-wig. "You couldn't have made more noise if someone had been murdering you!"

"I hate ear-wigs!" she replied, still shuddering. "I hate all crawly things. Oh-h-h!"

And here was another aspect of her: her skill in doing things that required effort and thought. She handled a boat better than he could handle it. He was more astonished at this feat than he had been when he discovered that she had great skill in managing a house and in cooking food, for he assumed that all women were inspired by Almighty God with a genius for housekeeping and that only a deliberately sinful nature prevented a woman from serving her husband with an excellently-prepared dinner. In a vague way, he had imagined that Eleanor would need instruction in housekeeping, but that she would "soon pick it up." Any woman could "soon pick it up." His mother, he decided, would give tips to Eleanor while they were at Ballyards, and thereafter things would go very smoothly. He had determined that the flat at Hampstead which they had rented should be furnished according to his taste so that there should be no mistake about it; but when they began to choose furniture, he found that Eleanor had better judgment than he had, and he wisely deferred to her opinion. He was inclined, he discovered, to accept things which he disliked or did not want rather than take the trouble to get only the things he desired and appreciated; but Eleanor had no compunction in making a disinterested shop-assistant run about and fetch and carry until she had either obtained the thing for which she wished or was satisfied that it was not in the shop. John always had a sense of shame at leaving a shop without making a purchase when the assistant had been given much bother in their behalf; but Eleanor said that this was silliness. "That's what he's there for," she said of the shop-assistant. "I'm not going to buy things I don't want just because you're afraid of hurting his feelings!"

He began to feel, while they were furnishing their flat, that she knew her own mind at least as well as he knew his, and a fear haunted his thoughts that perhaps this adequacy of knowledge might bring trouble to them. Gradually he found himself consulting her as an equal, even accepting her advice, and seldom instructing her as one instructs a beloved pupil. When she required advice, she asked for it. At Ballyards, he had seen his mother quickening into zestful life because of Eleanor's desire to be informed of things. One evening he had come home from a visit to Mr. Cairnduff to find Eleanor seated on the high stool in the "Counting House" of the shop while Uncle William explained the working of the business to her.

"She's a great wee girl, that!" Uncle William said afterwards to John. "The great wee girl! You've done well for yourself marrying her, my son. She's a well-brought-up girl ... a girl with a family ... and that's more nor you could say for some of the women you might 'a' married. That Logan girl, now!..."

"I'd never have married her," John interrupted.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't. They're no family at all, the Logans ... just a dragged-up, thrown-together lot. They've no pride in themselves. They'd marry anybody, that family would. Willie's away to the bad altogether ... drinking and gambling and worse ... and Aggie got married on a traveller from Belfast, and two hours after she married the man, he was dead drunk. He's been drunk ever since, they say. Aw, she's a poor mouth, that woman, and not fit to hold a candle to Eleanor. I'm thankful glad you've married a sensible woman with her head on the right way, and not one of these flyaway pieces you see knocking around these times. I'd die of despair to see you married to a woman with no more gumption than an old hen!..."

II

He had experienced his most humiliating defect in comparison with Eleanor on board the mail-boat from Kingstown to Holyhead. He had been sea-sick, but she had seemed unaware of the fact that she was afloat on a rough sea. That terribly swift race of water that beats against a boat off Holyhead and causes the least queasy of stomachs a certain amount of discomposure, affected Eleanor not at all; and when they disembarked, it was she who found comfortable seats in the London train for them and saw to their luggage; for John still felt ill and miserable. "Poor old thing," she said, "you do look a sight!"

III

Mrs. MacDermott had begged him to stay beyond the stipulated time in Ballyards, and Uncle William, with a glance towards Eleanor, had reinforced her appeal; but John had refused to yield to it. There was work to be done in London, and Eleanor and he must return to town to do it. In a short while, his play would be produced ... he must attend the rehearsals of it ... and then there was his novel for which he had yet to find a publisher; and he must write another book. Eleanor had hesitated for a few moments, not irresponsive to Uncle William's look, but the desire to be in her own home had conquered her desire to remain in Ballyards, and so she had not asked John to stay away from London any longer. The flat was a small and incommodious one, but it was in a quiet street and not very far from Hampstead Heath. They had spent more money on furnishing it than they had intended to spend, but John had soothed Eleanor's mind by promising that his play would more than make up for their extravagance; and when, a fortnight after their return to town, Mr. Claude Jannissary, "the Progressive Publisher," wrote to John and invited him to call on him, they felt certain that their anxieties had been very foolish. John visited Mr. Jannissary on the morning after he had received that enlightened gentleman's letter, and was overwhelmed by the praise paid to his book. Mr. Jannissary said that he was not merely willing, but actually eager to publish it. He felt certain that its author had a great future before him, and he wished to be able to say in after years that he had been the first to recognize John's genius. He did not anticipate that he would make any profit whatever out of The Enchanted Lover ... the title of the story ... at all events for several years, partly because John still had to create a reputation for himself and partly because of the appalling conditions with which enlightened publishers had to contend. In time, no doubt, John would attract a substantial body of loyal readers, but in the meantime there was, if John would forgive the gross commercialism of the expression, "no immediate money in him." Nevertheless, Mr. Jannissary was prepared to gamble on John's future. Even if he should never make enough to cover the expense of publishing John's book, he would still feel compensated for his loss merely through having introduced the world to so excellent a novel. Idealism was not very popular, he said, but thank God he was an idealist. He believed in Art and Literature and Beauty, and he was prepared to make sacrifices for his beliefs. He could not offer any payment in advance on account of royalties to John ... much as he would like to do so ... for the conditions with which an enlightened publisher who tried to preserve his ideals intact had to contend were truly appalling; but he would publish the book immediately if John would consent to forego all royalties on the first five hundred copies, and would accept a royalty of ten per cent on all copies sold in excess of that number, the royalty to rise to fifteen per cent when the copies sold exceeded two thousand. Mr. Jannissary would put himself to the great inconvenience of trying to find a publisher for the book in America, and would only expect to receive twenty-five per cent of the author's proceeds for his trouble....

John had not greatly liked the look of Mr. Claude Jannissary. So uncompromising an idealist might have been expected to possess a more pleasing appearance and a less shifty look in his eyes ... but soothed vanity and youthful eagerness to appear in print and a feeling that very often appearances were against idealists, caused him to sign the agreement which Mr. Jannissary had already prepared for him. A great thrill of pleasure went through him as he signed the long document, full of involved clauses. He was now entitled to call himself an author. In a little while, a book of his would be purchaseable in bookshops.... "We'll print immediately," said Mr. Jannissary, handing a copy of the agreement, signed by himself, to John and putting the other copy carefully away. "I'm sure the book will be a great success ... artistically, at all events ... and after all, that's the chief thing. That's the chief thing. Ah, Art, Art, Mr. MacDermott, what a compelling thing it is! I often feel that I have thrown my life away ever since I resolved to publish books instead of writing them. There are times when I long to throw up everything and run away into the country and meditate. Meditate! But one can't escape from the bonds of the body, Mr. MacDermott!"

"Oh, no," John vaguely answered.

"The world is too much for us ... poor, bewildered idealists, searching for the gleam and so often losing it. Rent has to be paid, butchers demand payment for their meat ... I'm speaking figuratively, of course, for I'm a vegetarian myself ... and one must pay one's way. So the body has us, and we have to compromise. Ah, yes! But at the bottom of Pandora's box, Mr. MacDermott, there is always.... Hope! This way, please, and good afternoon! It's been very nice indeed to meet you!..."

Hinde had disturbed John's complacency very considerably when he saw the agreement which John had signed. Eleanor had begun the process by failing to understand why the first five hundred copies of the novel should be published free of royalty. If Mr. Jannissary was to make money out of these five hundred copies why was John not to make any? He quelled her doubts momentarily by informing her that she was totally ignorant of the conditions of publishing. If she only knew how appalling they were!... Mr. Jannissary had so impressed John with the terrible state of the publisher's business that he had gone away from the office feeling exceedingly fortunate to have his book published at all without being asked to pay for it. Eleanor's doubts, however, had revived when Hinde, who dined with them on the evening of the day on which the agreement had been signed, declared with extraordinary emphasis that Mr. Jannissary was a common robber and would, if he had his way, be enduring torture in gaol.

"He's a notorious little scoundrel who has been living for years on robbing young authors by flattering their vanity. I suppose he told you you were a marvel and bleated about his ideals?"

John could not deny that Mr. Jannissary had spoken of his ideals several times during their interview.

"I know him, the greasy little bounder!" Hinde exclaimed. "You'll never get one farthing from that book of yours, for he won't print more than five hundred copies!..."

"He will if they're demanded."

"If they're demanded. Do you think they will be?"

"I hope so!"

"Oh, we can all hope, but there's not much chance of you realising your hope. Your book isn't a very good one!..." Eleanor glanced up at this. She had not felt very certain about John's book herself, but now that Hinde was belittling it, she was angry with him.

"I think it's good," she said decisively.

"Even if it is," Hinde retorted, "it will only sell well if it's advertised well. Lots of good books don't sell even when they are advertised. But Jannissary doesn't advertise. He hasn't got enough money to advertise. Look at the newspapers! How many times do you see Jannissary's list in the advertisements?" John could not remember. "Very seldom," said Hinde. "His books get less attention from reviewers than other people's because the reviewers know that he's a rascal and that nine out of ten of his books aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Booksellers will hardly stock them. He makes his living by selling copies to the libraries and persuading mugs to pay for the publication of their books. That's how Jannissary lives!..."

"He didn't ask me to pay for publishing my book," John murmured.

"That's a wonder," Hinde replied. "Why didn't you ask for advice before you signed this thing?"

"I want the book published as soon as possible. I have to make my name and I daresay I shall have to pay for making it!"

Hinde put the agreement down. "Oh, well, if you look at it like that," he said, "there's no more to be said, but you've done a silly thing!"

"I don't see it," John boldly asserted, though there was doubt in his mind.

"You'll see it some day!"

Hinde had parted from them earlier that evening than he had intended or they had expected. He made an excuse for leaving them by saying that he was tired and needed sleep after late nights of work, but he went because John's vanity had been hurt by his criticism of the agreement and also because he had said that John's book had no remarkable qualities. "I'm telling you the truth that you're always demanding, and I won't tell you anything else. You've been very anxious to tell it to other people and now you'll have a chance of hearing it yourself. Your book is not a good book. There are dozens like it published every year. The Sensation reviews them six-a-time in three or four hundred words. You may write good books some day, but The Enchanted Lover is just an ordinary, mediocre book. I think your tragedy is better!..."

"Well, it ought to be. It was written afterwards," John said, trying hard to speak without revealing resentment.

"Yes. Yes, of course!" Hinde murmured.

A little later, he had taken his leave of them.

"I wonder if he's right!" Eleanor said to John when he had gone.

"Of course he isn't," John tartly replied. "I believe he's jealous!"

"Jealous!"

"Yes. He's been talking for years of writing a tragedy about St. Patrick, but he's not done it, and then I come along and do it quite easily and get the play accepted. And my novel's to be published, too. Of course he's jealous! Any disappointed man's jealous when he sees someone else doing things he's failed to do. I'm sorry for him really!"

"Perhaps that is it," Eleanor said, taking comfort to herself.

"No doubt about it. Anyhow, even if the novel is a failure, there's the play. That's good. I know it's good. The novel was bound to have some faults. All first books have!"

IV

Then came the disappointment of the tragedy. The manager of the Cottenham Repertory Theatre wrote to say that they were compelled to postpone the production of it for a few weeks because their season had been unfortunate and they were eager to replenish their treasury by the production of popular pieces. They all admired John's play very much and were quite certain that it would be a great artistic success, but its tragical nature made it unlikely to be profitable to any of them just at present....

"It's funny how these people keep on talking about artistic success when they think a thing isn't going to be any good," Eleanor said when he had finished reading the letter to her.

"No good!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean, no good!"

"Well ... of course I don't mean that your play isn't any good ... only I begin to feel doubtful about things when I hear the word artistic mentioned."

"They're only postponing the play for a short while until they've got enough money together to keep on. That's reasonable, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes. It's reasonable. I'm not saying anything about that ... only it's a disappointment!"

"I'm disappointed myself," he said, ruefully contemplating the letter.

"How much do you think you'll make out of it, John?" Eleanor asked pensively.

"Make? Oh, I don't know. About a hundred pounds or so on the first performances ... and then there's the London season ... and of course if the play's a great success, we shall make our fortune. But I think we can reckon on a hundred pounds anyhow. I don't want to expect too much. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I'm getting anxious about money. You see, dear, you haven't earned much since we got married, have you?"

"No, not much. One or two articles in the Sensation. But you needn't worry about that. I'll look after the money part. Don't you worry!"

"Perhaps you could get a regular job on the Evening Herald now that Mr. Hinde's in charge of it," she suggested.

Hinde had recently been appointed editor of the Evening Herald.

"Oh, no, Eleanor, I don't want a journalist's job. I'm a writer ... an artist ... not a reporter. Besides, I shouldn't have time to work at the book I'm doing now. Look at Hinde. He never has time to do anything but journalism. The worst of work like that is that after a time you can't do anything else. You think in paragraphs!..."

"Supposing the play isn't a success ... I mean a financial success?" she asked.

"Well, I'll make money for you some other way. Leave it to me, Eleanor, I'm pretty confident about myself. I feel convinced that the play and the novel will be successful financially as well as artistically. I've always been confident about myself!"

"Yes."

"And I feel quite confident about this. So don't worry your head any more like a good girl!"

The receipt of the proofs and the excitement of correcting them caused Eleanor to forget her anxiety about their finances. John and she sat in front of the fire, she with one batch of galley sheets in her lap, he with another; and he read the story to her, correcting misprints and making alterations as he went along, while she copied the corrections on to her proofs.

"Do you like it?" he asked, eager for her praise.

"Yes," she said, leaning her head against his shoulder, "I do like it. It's ... it's quite good, isn't it?"

He imagined that there was a note of dubiety in her voice, but he did not press her for greater praise, and they finished the correction of the proofs and sent them to Mr. Claude Jannissary as quickly as they could.

"What does it feel like to have written a book?" Eleanor said to him when the proofs had been dispatched.

"Fine," he replied. "I wish my Uncle Matthew were alive. He'd feel very proud of me!"

"I'm proud of you," she said, drawing nearer to him.

"Are you?" he exclaimed, his eyes brightening. He put his arm round her neck and she took hold of his hand. "Do you like me better now, Eleanor, than you did when we were married?"

"Oh, yes, dear, of course I do."

"Do you remember that night on the Embankment when we were both so scared of getting married?"

"Yes. Weren't we silly? I very nearly ran away that night ... only I didn't know where to run to. I was awfully frightened, John. I thought we were both making terrible mistakes!..."

"Well, we haven't regretted it yet, have we?"

"No, not yet. So far our marriage has been successful!"

"I told you it would be all right, didn't I? I knew I could make you happy. You're such a darling ... how could I help loving you?"

V

The novel was published in the same week that the tragedy was produced at the Cottenham Repertory Theatre. John had intended to be present at all the rehearsals of his play, but the manager of the theatre informed him that this was hardly necessary. It would be sufficient if he were to attend the last two and the dress rehearsal, and when John considered the state of his work on the second novel, he decided to accept the manager's advice. "After all," he said to Eleanor, "I don't know anything at all about producing plays and this chap spends his life at the job, so I can safely leave it to him!"

The complimentary copies of his novel reached him on the evening before he was to travel to Cottenham to attend his first rehearsal. He opened the parcel with trembling fingers and took out the six red-covered volumes and spread them on the table. He liked the bold black letters in which the title of the book and his name were printed on the covers: THE ENCHANTED LOVER by JOHN MACDERMOTT. It seemed incredible to him that a book should bear his name, but there, in big, black letters on a red ground, was his name. He turned the pages, reading a sentence here and a sentence there until Eleanor, who had been out when the parcel arrived, came in.

"Look!" he said, holding one of the books towards her. She exclaimed with delight and ran forward to take the book from him. "Oh, my dear," she said, clasping the novel with one hand while she embraced him with the other. "I'm so proud of you, you clever creature!"

He was greatly moved by her affection, and he felt that he wanted to cry. There were very queer sensations in his throat, and he had tremendous difficulty in keeping his eyes from blinking.

"It's rather nice?" he said, touching the book.

"It's lovely," she said. She went to the table. "Are these the others?" She drew a chair forward and sat down. "Let's send them out to-night. This one to your mother and this one to Uncle William. I'll keep this one!" She opened the book at the dedication "To Eleanor." "Here," she said, "write your name in it!" He found a pen and ink and wrote under the dedication, "from her devoted husband," and when she saw what he had written, she hugged him and told him again that she was proud of him.

"What about the others? Are you going to send them out, too?" she asked, and he proposed to her that one should be sent to Hinde, one to Mr. Cairnduff and one to Mr. McCaughan....

"We shan't have any left, except my copy, if you do that!" she objected.

"We can easily get some more," he replied.

"I'd like to send one to that beastly cousin in Exeter just to let him see how clever you are. He hadn't the decency to send us a wedding present, the stingy miser!"

They packed up the books after John had inscribed them, and went off to the post-office together to send them off.

"Won't it be fun reading the reviews?" said John as they walked up High Street.

"I hope they'll like it, the people who review it," she answered. "Don't let's go in just yet. Let's walk along the Spaniards' Road a little while!"

They walked up Heath Street, and when they came to the railings above The Vale of Health, they stood against them and looked towards London. A blue haze had settled over the city and the trees were like long hanging veils through which little, yellow lights from the street-lamps shone like tiny jewels. The air was full of drowsy sounds, as if the earth were happily tired and were resting for a while before the pleasures of the night began.

"Would you like to go back to your club, Eleanor?" John said.

"Silly old silly!" she replied, pinching his arm.

"I feel as if I want to tell everybody that you've written a book and a play," she said, as they walked on. "It doesn't seem right that all these people don't know about you!"

He went to Cottenham on the next day, carrying with him an early edition of the Evening Herald in which Hinde had printed a very flattering review of The Enchanted Lover. Eleanor had been puzzled by the promptness with which the review had appeared until John explained to her that review copies of books were sent to the newspapers a week or a fortnight before the date of publication.

"It's a very good review," she said. "I thought he didn't like the book much!"

"So did I. I hope he isn't just writing like this to please me. I don't want insincere reviews!..."

"I expect," said Eleanor, "he didn't tell you how much, he really liked it!"

"Hmmm! Perhaps that's it," John replied.

He put the paper in his pocket, and as the train drew out of Easton and started on its journey to Cottenham, he speculated on the sincerity of Hinde's review. He took the paper out of his pocket and read it again. The review was headed, "A REMARKABLE FIRST NOVEL" and was full of phrases that seemed fulsome even to John. "We prophesy that this notable novel will have a very great success among the reading public. It is certainly the finest story of its kind that has been published in this country for a generation."

"I wouldn't have said that about it myself," John reflected. "Of course, I'd like to think it's true, but!... I hope this isn't just logrolling!" He remembered how fiercely Hinde had described the back-scratching, high-minded poets who boomed each other in their papers. "I don't want to get praise that way," he thought, putting the paper back into his pocket. "I'll order half-a-dozen copies of the Herald when I get back from Cottenham. My Uncle William will be glad of a copy, and so will Mr. Cairnduff and the minister!..."

VI

The Cottenham Repertory Theatre was a dingy, ill-built house in a back street in Cottenham. It had been a music-hall of a low class until the earnest playgoers of Cottenham, extremely anxious about the condition of the drama, formed themselves into a society to improve the theatre. By dint of agitation and much hard work, they contrived to get enough money together to take the music-hall over from its owner who was unable to compete against the syndicate halls and was steadily drinking himself to death in consequence, and turned it into a repertory theatre. Their success had been moderate, for they united to their good intentions a habit of denunciation of all plays that were not "repertory" plays which had the effect partly of irritating the common playgoer and partly of frightening him. All the plays that were labelled "repertory" plays were praised by these earnest students of the drama without any sort of discrimination, and when, as often happened, a very poor play was produced at the Repertory Theatre, any common playgoer who saw it and was bored by it, went away in the belief that he was not educated up to the standard of such austere work and resolved that he would seek his entertainment elsewhere in future. It was to this theatre that John went on the day after his arrival in Cottenham. The town itself depressed him immeasurably. It was the most shapeless, nondescript, undignified town he had ever seen, and yet it was one of the richest places in England. There was no seemliness in its main streets; little huckstering shops hustled larger and more pretentious shops, but all of them had an air of vivacious vulgarity. They had not been given the look of sobriety which age gives even to ugly streets in ugly towns. They seemed to be striving against each other in a competition to decide which was the commonest and shoddiest shop in the city. It seemed to John that all these Cottenham shops dropped their aitches!... The clouds were grey when he arrived in Cottenham, dirty-grey and very cheerless; they were still dirty-grey when he went to the theatre, and rain fell before he reached it; and the clouds remained in that dismal state until he quitted Cottenham after the first performance of Milchu and St. Patrick: A Tragedy. It seemed to John that they would never be otherwise than dirty-grey, that the streets would always be wet and the shops always clamantly vulgar.

"I wouldn't live in this place for the wide world," he said, as he turned into the stage-door of the Repertory Theatre.

He was directed to the manager's office by the doorkeeper. The Manager was on the stage, so the girl secretary informed him, and if Mr. MacDermott would kindly follow her she would take him there at once. He had never seen the stage side of the proscenium before, and although the place was dark and he stumbled over properties, he felt enormously interested in what he saw.

"Is that the scenery?" he said to the secretary as they passed some tawdry looking flats lying against the walls of the scene-dock.

"Yes," she answered. "It looks awful in the daylight, doesn't it? But when the footlights are on and the limes are lit, you'd be surprised to see how fine it looks. They say that common materials look better in limelight than good things do. Funny, isn't it?"

She led him on to the stage and brought him to the manager.

"This is Mr. MacDermott," she said to a tall, lean, worried man who was standing immediately in front of the footlights, directing the rehearsal which was then beginning.

"Oh, ah, yes!" said the manager, and then he turned to John. "I'm Gidney," he said.

John murmured a politeness.

"Now, let me introduce you to people!" He turned to the players, all of whom had that appearance of depression which actors habitually wear in daylight, as if they felt naked and ashamed without their grease-paint. "This is the author of the play," he exclaimed to them. "Mr. MacDermott!" He led John to each of the players, naming them as he did so, and each of them murmured that he or she was delighted to have the pleasure!...

"I think if you were to sit in the front row of the stalls, Mr. MacDermott!" said Gidney, "while the rehearsal proceeds, that would be best. You can tell me at the end of each act what alterations or suggestions you wish to propose!"

"Very good," said John, feeling his spirits running rapidly into his boots. What were these cheerless people going to do with the play over which he had laboured and sweated for weeks and weeks?...

They went through their parts with a lifeless facility that turned his tragedy, he imagined, into a neat piece of machinery and left it without any glow of emotion whatever. Now and then the ease with which they recited their words was interrupted by forgetfulness and the player, whose memory had failed him, would snap his fingers and call to the prompter, "What is it?" or "Give me that line, will you?"

"How do you think it's going?" said the manager to John at the end of the first act.

"Well, I don't know," he answered with a nervous laugh. "They aren't putting much enthusiasm into it, are they?"

"Ah, but this is only a rehearsal. Wait till you see the dress rehearsal!"

He felt considerably relieved. A rehearsal, of course, must be very different from a performance. But on the night of the dress rehearsal ... it took place on Sunday, for the stage was occupied on week-nights by regular performances ... the players seemed to go to pieces. All of them had difficulty in remembering their lines, and when at the end of the last act, a piece of the scenery collapsed upon St. Patrick, John felt that he could have cheerfully seen the entire theatre collapse on everybody concerned with it. He went to the grubby Temperance hotel in which he had taken a room, and gave himself completely to gloom and despair. He felt that his play was not quite so brilliant as he had imagined it to be, but he was not sure that his dissatisfaction with it ought not really to be displayed against the actors. Any play, treated as his had been treated, must seem to be a poor piece. Gidney had appeared to be pleased with the dress rehearsal and had wrung John's hand with great heartiness when they separated. "Going splendidly!" he murmured. "Congratulate you. Excellent piece!..." On the way to his hotel, he had seen a play-bill in the window of a tobacconist's shop, and a thrill of pleasure had quickened him as he stood in front of the glass and read his name beneath the title of the play. He must remember to ask Gidney for a copy of the play-bill to hang up in his flat! Now, in the dull and not very clean bedroom of the Temperance Hotel, he felt indifferent to play-bills and the thrill of seeing his name in print. He wished that Eleanor were with him. They had decided that she should not be present at the first night in Cottenham because of the expense of hotel bills and railway fares.

"I'll see it in London," she had said bravely, trying to conceal her disappointment. Now, however, he wished that she were with him. She had remarkable powers of comforting. If he were depressed, Eleanor would draw his head down to her shoulder and would soothe him into a good temper again. There had been times since their marriage when he had been dubious about her ... when it seemed to him that she had only a kindly affection for him and still had not got love for him ... and the thought filled him with resentment against her. Why could she not love him? He was lovable enough and he loved her. A woman ought to love a man who loved her!... Then some perception of the self-sufficiency and the smugness of these thoughts went through his mind and he would abase himself in spirit before her and reproach himself for unkindnesses that he imagined he had shown to her ... hasty words that hurt her. His temper was quick to rise, but equally quick to fall; and sometimes he failed to realise that in the sudden outburst of anger he had said cruel, hurting things which made no impression on him because they were said without any feeling, but left a hard impression on those to whom they were addressed. He had seen pain in Eleanor's eyes when he had spoken some swift and biting word to her, and then, all repentance, he had tried to kiss the pain from her....

To-night, in this grubby bedroom, smelling of teetotallers and grim, forbidding people in whom are to be found none of the genial foibles of ordinary, hearty men, he felt an excess of remorse for any unkind thing he had ever said to Eleanor. His pessimism about his play caused him to exaggerate the enormity of his offences. He pictured her, looking at him with that queer air of puzzled pathos that had so impressed him when he first saw her, and intense shame filled him when he thought that he had done or said anything to make her look at him in that way. Well, he would compensate her for any pain that he had caused her. He would love her so dearly that her life would be passed in continual sunshine and comfort. Even if she were never to return his love or to return only a slight share of it, he would devote himself to her just as completely as if she gave everything to him. His play might be miserably acted and be a failure, apart from the acting, but what mattered that! While he had Eleanor he had everything.

VII

He went down to the theatre on the evening of the first performance in a state of calm and quietness which greatly astonished him. He had expected to tremble and quake with nervousness and to be reluctant to go near the theatre. He remembered to have read somewhere an account of the way in which some melodramatist of repute behaved on a first night. He walked up and down the Embankment while his play was being performed, mopping his fevered brow and groaning in agony. Someone had found the melodramatist on one occasion, sitting at the foot of Cleopatra's Needle, howling into his handkerchief.... John, however, had no terrors whatever when he entered the theatre, and he told himself that the melodramatist was either an extremely emotional man or a very considerable liar. There was a moderate number of people in the auditorium, enough to preserve the theatre from seeming sparsely-occupied, but not enough to justify anyone in saying that the house was full. The atmosphere resembled that of a church. People spoke, when they spoke at all, in whispers, and John was so infected by the air of solemnity that when a small boy in the gallery began to call out "Acid drops or cigarettes!" he felt that a sidesman must appear from a pew and take the lad to the police-station for brawling in a sacred edifice. He waited for the orchestra to appear, but the play began without any preliminary music. The lights were lowered, and soon afterwards someone beat the floor of the stage with a wooden mallet ... sending forth three sepulchral sounds that seemed to hammer out of the audience any tendency it might have had to enjoy itself. Then the curtain ascended, and the play began.

VIII

The actors were much better than they had promised to be at the dress rehearsal, but they were still far from being good. It was very plain that they had been insufficiently rehearsed and there were some bad cases of mis-casting. Nevertheless, the performance was better than he had anticipated, and his spirits rose almost as rapidly as they had fallen on the previous night; and when at the end of the performance there were calls for the author, he passed through the door that gave access from the auditorium to the stage with a great deal of elation. He was thrust on to the stage by Gidney, and found himself standing between two of the actresses. There was a great black cavern in front of him which, he realised, was the auditorium, and he could hear applause rising out of it. The curtain rose and fell again, and the buzz of voices calling praise to him grew louder. Then the curtain fell again, and this time it remained down. He realised that he had gripped the actresses by the hand and that he was holding them very tightly.... "I beg your pardon!" he said, releasing them.

"Awf'lly good!" said one of the actresses, smiling at him as she moved across the stage. How horrible actors and actresses in their make-up looked close to! He could not conceive of himself kissing that woman while she had so much paint on her face.... He turned to walk off the stage, and found that walking was very difficult. He was trembling so that his knees were almost knocking together and when he moved, he reeled slightly.

"I say," he said to one of the actors, "my nerve's gone to pieces. Funny thing ... I ... felt nothing at all ... nothing ... until just now!"

The actor took hold of his arm and steadied him. "Queer how nerves affect people," he said, as John and he left the stage. "I knew a man who got stage fright two days before the first night of a play in which he had a big part. Nearly collapsed in the street. All right afterwards ... never turned a hair on the stage. Must congratulate you on your play ... jolly good, I call it. Tragedy, of course!..."

He had expected some sort of festivity after the performance, but there was none. The players were eager to get home, and Gidney had a headache, so John thanked each of them and went back to his hotel.

"Thank goodness," he said, "I shall be at home tomorrow."

He got into bed and lay quietly in the darkness, but he could not sleep, and so he turned on the light again and tried to read; but his head was thumping, thumping and the words had no meaning for him. He put the book down. How extraordinary is the common delusion, he thought, that actors and actresses lead gay lives! Could anything be more dull than the life of an actor in a repertory theatre? Daily rehearsals in a dingy and draughty theatre and nightly performances in half-rehearsed plays!... "Give me the life of a bank clerk for real gaiety," he murmured. "An actor's just a drudge ... and a dull drudge, too! Very uninteresting people, actors!... Why the devil did I leave Eleanor behind?"

IX

He returned to London on the following morning, carrying copies of the Cottenham Daily Post and the Cottenham Mercury with him. The notices of his play were mildly appreciative ... that of the Post being so mild as to be almost denunciatory. The critic asserted that John's play, while interesting, showed that its author had no real understanding of the meaning of tragedy. He found no evidence in Milchu and St. Patrick that John appreciated the importance of the pressure of the Significant Event. The Significant Event decided the development of a tragedy, but in Mr. MacDermott's play there was no Significant Event. The play just happened, so to speak, and it ought not to "just happen." It was an excellent discursus on the drama from the time of the morality plays to the time of the Irish Players, and it included references to Euripides, Ibsen, the Noh plays of Japan, Mr. Bernard Shaw (in a patronising manner), Synge and Mr. Masefield; but John felt, when he had read it, that most of it had been written before its author had seen his play. The other notice was less learned, but it left no doubt in the mind of the readers that although Milchu and St. Patrick was an interesting piece ... the word "interesting," after he had read these notices, seemed to John to be equivalent to the word "poor" ... it was not likely to mark any epochs.

"I don't think much of Cottenham anyhow!" said John, putting, the papers in his pocket.

Eleanor met him at Euston. The fatigue which settles on a traveller in the last hour of a long railway journey had raised the devil of depression in John. He had reread the notices in the Cottenham papers, and as he considered their very restrained praises of his play, he remembered that Hinde had said The Enchanted Lover was an ordinary novel.

"I wonder am I any good," he said to himself as the train hauled itself into Euston.

He looked out of the window and saw Eleanor standing on the platform, scanning the carriage as she sought for him.

"Well, she thinks I am," he thought, as he alighted from the train. "Eleanor!" he called to her, and she turned and when she saw him, her eyes lit and she hurried to him.