When my dear friends, the publishers, asked me to turn this play into a novel, I recalled my experience of by-gone days, and the idea flashed into my mind that here was an opportunity to get even, but I am a preacher as well as a story-writer, and in either capacity I found I could not do it. Frankly, I did not want to do it.
My experience, however, has made me perhaps unduly sensitive, and I determined, since I had undertaken this work, to make it represent Mr. Gillette’s remarkable and brilliant play as faithfully as I could, and I have done so. I have used my own words only in those slight changes necessitated by book presentation instead of production on the stage. I have entered into as few explanations as possible and have limited my own discussion of the characters, their motives, and their actions, to what was absolutely necessary to enable the reader to comprehend. On the stage much is left to the eye which has to be conveyed by words in a book, and this is my excuse for even those few digressions that appear.
I have endeavoured to subordinate my own imagination to that of the accomplished playwright. I have played something of the part of the old Greek Chorus which explained the drama, and there has been a touch of the scene-painter’s art in my small contribution to the book.
Otherwise, I have not felt at liberty to make any departure from the setting, properties, episodes, actions, or dialogue. Mine has been a very small share in this joint production. The story and the glory are Mr. Gillette’s, not mine. And I am cheerfully determined that as the author of the first, he shall have all of the second.
Cyrus Townsend Brady.
St. George’s Rectory,
Kansas City, Mo., November, 1911.
CONTENTS
| BOOK I WHAT HAPPENED AT EIGHT O’CLOCK | |
| I | [The Battery Passes] |
| II | [A Commission from the President] |
| III | [Orders to Captain Thorne] |
| IV | [Miss Mitford’s Intervention] |
| V | [The Unfaithful Servant] |
| VI | [The Confidence of Edith Varney] |
| BOOK II WHAT HAPPENED AT NINE O’CLOCK | |
| VII | [Wilfred Writes a Letter] |
| VIII | [Edith Is Forced to Play the Game] |
| IX | [The Shot That Killed] |
| BOOK III WHAT HAPPENED AT TEN O’CLOCK | |
| X | [Caroline Mitford Writes a Despatch] |
| XI | [Mr. Arrelsford Again Interposes] |
| XII | [Thorne Takes Charge of the Telegraph] |
| XIII | [The Tables Are Turned] |
| XIV | [The Call of the Key] |
| XV | [Love and Duty at the Touch] |
| BOOK IV WHAT HAPPENED AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK | |
| XVI | [The Tumult in Human Hearts] |
| XVII | [Wilfred Plays the Man] |
| XVIII | [Captain Thorne Justifies Himself] |
| XIX | [The Drumhead Court-Martial] |
| XX | [The Last Reprieve] |
| [Afterword] | |
BOOK I
WHAT HAPPENED AT EIGHT O’CLOCK