As it happened I did have a week vacant, and I was naturally quite agreeable. Now it is the custom among artistes on the last night of a pantomime engagement to have a bit of a “flare-up,” and we did so on this occasion, the champagne circulating freely.
We kept it up late, or rather, to be strictly accurate, early, so that I had to hurry straight from the theatre to catch my train for Worcester, which left at the unearthly hour of two-thirty on Sunday morning.
On the Monday I met my namesake for the first time, and the first words he greeted me with were, “Here’s a pretty go,” at the same time pointing to a stack of letters about a foot high on the table of his private room at the theatre, all addressed to “Arthur Carlton, Esq.”
I had arranged, of course, to have my correspondence forwarded to the theatre in the usual way, never giving a moment’s thought to the confusion that would arise. Now we neither of us knew which letters were mine and which were his.
“Well,” I said at last, “I’ve no business that I am ashamed of. You’re quite at liberty to open my letters.”
“All right!” he answered, and started on the topmost one of the pile. He opened it, glanced at it, then threw it over to me.
“That’s yours!” he said.
Something in his manner made me feel uneasy. I grabbed the letter, read the first few lines; then my face fell.
“Dear Mr. Carlton,” it ran. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, running away without paying your bill? And me a poor lone widow, with three little children to support, etc., etc.”
The letter was from my late landlady. In my excitement and hurry I had quitted Newcastle without settling up with her for my week’s board and lodging, the affair having, I need hardly explain, entirely slipped my memory.