“Horace!” Mrs Parker’s gentle heart was wrung. The situation hinted at by her husband was no new one—indeed, it formed the basis of at least fifty per cent of the stories in the True Heart Novelette Series, of which she was a determined reader—but it had never failed to touch her. “Do you think her ladyship means to come between them and wreck their romance?”
“I think she means to have a jolly good try.”
“But Sir Derek has his own money, hasn’t he? I mean, it’s not like when Sir Courtenay Travers fell in love with the milk-maid and was dependent on his mother, the Countess, for everything. Sir Derek can afford to do what he pleases, can’t he?”
Parker shook his head tolerantly. The excellence of the cigar and the soothing qualities of the whisky-and-soda had worked upon him, and he was feeling less ruffled.
“You don’t understand these things,” he said. “Women like her ladyship can talk a man into anything and out of anything. I wouldn’t care, only you can see the poor girl is mad over the feller. What she finds attractive in him, I can’t say, but that’s her own affair.”
“He’s very handsome, Horace, with those flashing eyes and that stern mouth,” argued Mrs Parker.
Parker sniffed.
“Have it your own way,” he said. “It’s no treat to me to see his eyes flash, and if he’d put that stern mouth of his to some better use than advising the guv’nor to lock up the cigars and trouser the key, I’d be better pleased. If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” said Parker, “it’s not to be trusted!” He lifted his cigar and looked at it censoriously. “I thought so! Burning all down one side. They will do that if you light ’em careless. Oh, well,” he continued, rising and going to the humidor, “there’s plenty more where that came from. Out of evil cometh good,” said Parker philosophically. “If the guv’nor hadn’t been in such a overwrought state tonight, he’d have remembered not to leave the key in the key-hole. Help yourself to another glass of port, Ellen, and let’s enjoy ourselves!”
§ 2.
When one considers how full of his own troubles, how weighed down with the problems of his own existence the average playgoer generally is when he enters a theatre, it is remarkable that dramatists ever find it possible to divert and entertain whole audiences for a space of several hours. As regards at least three of those who had assembled to witness its opening performance, the author of “Tried by Fire,” at the Leicester Theater, undoubtedly had his work cut out for him.