“I’d no idea you were a writer,” he said; and I told him I hadn’t either; but he believed it was in me. He, too, was a writer, and he offered to introduce me to a friend of his who was an editor.
A glimpse of literary life was, of course, worth almost anything to me, and I said that I should be exceedingly thankful to meet a professional editor, if he didn’t think such a thing was above me. Then he explained that his friend, Mr. Bulger, was an enthusiast of the drama and edited a penny paper called Thespis.
“He owns it and does everything himself but print it,” explained Brightwin. “It is not strictly self-supporting yet, but the amateurs read it regularly, for he devotes a good deal of attention to their performances. I often go and criticise them for him. He pays expenses and hopes some day to do more than that. I write a good deal for him. My belief is that he would publish that poem in his paper, though, of course, I can’t promise.”
With the kindness and enthusiasm of the true creator for an inferior artist, Brightwin promised to show the poem to Mr. Bulger, and I was still thanking him most gratefully when our preceptor returned.
His face was gloomy, but he did not divulge the reason, and he proceeded with the rehearsal.
An event of considerable interest overtook me an hour later, when the evening’s work was at an end. As I left the school I met an old acquaintance of the opposite sex, and instantly recognised the grey-eyed girl who was waiting at the pit door of the Lyceum on the memorable occasion when I fainted. She remembered me, too, and was able to tell me the details of the event after I had lost consciousness.
She was a pupil like myself, only she belonged to the girls’ class.
“They ain’t going to allow mixed acting for the first six months,” she said. “Funny, ain’t it? You’d think it was as tricky as mixed bathing. How are you getting on?”
I told her of Mr. Merridew and Hamlet; and she told me that there were seven girls in her class, and that none of them could “act for nuts,” to use her own forcible expression.
An oldish woman had come to see the grey-eyed girl home, and when I offered to accompany them to their door, the oldish woman refused in peremptory tones. In fact, you might almost have thought she regarded me as a shady character. It transpired that she was the cook of the grey-eyed girl’s mother, and had been told off to the service of seeing the pupil to and from the classes at the Dramatic School. Before the cook’s rebuff I had, of course, to explain that I was also a pupil at the school, and a person of the most honourable behaviour where the fair sex is concerned; but the cook was not prepared to argue, and hurried away her charge without more words.