The room was tiny. It was a dressing-room. Only two nights before it had been used by the leading actress of a comic opera troupe which had played for three nights at Bonneville. A tattered sofa and limping toilet table occupied a third of the space. The air was heavy with the smell of stale grease paint, ointments, and sachet. Faded photographs of young women in tights and gauzes ornamented the mirror and the walls. Underneath the sofa was an old pair of corsets. The spangled skirt of a pink dress, turned inside out, hung against the wall.
And in the midst of such environment, surrounded by an excited group of men who gesticulated and shouted in his very face, pale, alert, agitated, his thin lips pressed tightly together, stood Magnus Derrick.
“Here,” cried Keast, as he entered, closing the door behind him, “where's the Governor? Here, Magnus, I've been looking for you. The crowd has gone wild out there. You've got to talk 'em down. Come out there and give those blacklegs the lie. They are saying you are hiding.”
But before Magnus could reply, Garnett turned to Keast.
“Well, that's what we want him to do, and he won't do it.”
“Yes, yes,” cried the half-dozen men who crowded around Magnus, “yes, that's what we want him to do.”
Keast turned to Magnus.
“Why, what's all this, Governor?” he exclaimed. “You've got to answer that. Hey? why don't you give 'em the lie?”
“I—I,” Magnus loosened the collar about his throat “it is a lie. I will not stoop—I would not—would be—it would be beneath my—my—it would be beneath me.”
Keast stared in amazement. Was this the Great Man the Leader, indomitable, of Roman integrity, of Roman valour, before whose voice whole conventions had quailed? Was it possible he was AFRAID to face those hired villifiers?