“And now,” he said, “I am going to ask you to do something for me. Do you recollect a young fellow who was acting with you at Edinburgh four summers ago—Ralph Denmead by name?”
“Why yes, to be sure. I met him only last Sunday at the Herefords. What a nice fellow he seems, and I lost my heart to his dear little wife.”
“I am glad you saw them both, they are a delightful couple. Well now, could you possibly get him a London engagement? Would Barry Sterne have any opening for him? It seems to me that there is a very good chance just now for a young romantic actor. We have no really satisfactory Romeo or Orlando.”
“But surely you are in no hurry to part with him? I hear he is very popular everywhere.”
“For myself I am in no hurry,” said Macneillie. “But I should be glad for him to get a London engagement, he deserves it, and then this wandering life is a little hard on his wife and child. They had better settle down, and if they were somewhere in your neighbourhood you would perhaps befriend them. Evereld is a dear little woman, you would like her, and she has the greatest admiration for you.”
Christine’s face brightened up, it pleased her greatly that he should have asked her to do something for him; she resolved to leave no stone unturned and to do her utmost for his friends.
“I should like to have them near me; you can’t think how lonely it is often,” she said. “If it were not for my work and for Charlie’s companionship I don’t think I could have endured it all this time. The best plan would be for Barry Sterne to see him act. I wonder whether there would be a chance of getting him to ran down for one of the performances in the Memorial Week?”
“That is a good idea,” said Macneillie. “By the bye, Sterne will scarcely remember it, but the boy did go to him some years ago when he first made up his mind to be an actor. I have often heard him describe the interview. He got cold comfort from Sterne and a most discouraging letter from me. But nothing daunts your real genius. He plodded on, and starved and struggled till things took a turn. And some day if I am not much mistaken he will be one of our leading actors.”
“His own opinion is that he owes everything to you,” said Christine with a smile. “I heard a great deal about you on Sunday from both of them. I shall be so glad if I can really do anything for people you care for, Hugh. The Denmeads will be quite a new object in life for me.”
Those words and the look which went with them were Macneillie’s comfort when, shortly after, he parted with Christine. But to stay longer at Stratford with nothing to do had become impossible for him. The river was a haunted place, he dared not go on it again, everything which on his arrival had seemed so peaceful bore upon it now the ineffaceable stamp of the bitter struggle he had passed through.