II.
But London is a monster with many hearts; it is capable of various emotions, and even at that feverish time it was at the full tide of a sensation of a different kind entirely. This was a new play and a new player. The play was “risky”; it was understood to present the fallen woman in her naked reality, and not as a soiled dove or sentimental plaything. The player was the actress who performed this part. She was new to the stage, and little was known of her, but it was whispered that she had something in common with the character she personated. Her success had been instantaneous: her photograph was in the shop windows, it had been reproduced in the illustrated papers, she had sat to famous artists, and her portrait in oils was on the line at Burlington House.
The play was the latest work of the Scandinavian dramatist, the actress was Glory Quayle.
At nine o'clock on the morning of Derby Day Glory was waiting in the drawing-room of the Garden House, dressed in a magnificent outdoor costume of pale gray which seemed to wave like a ripe hayfield. She looked paler and more nervous than before, and sometimes she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and sometimes looked away in the distance before her while she drew on her long white gloves and buttoned them. Rosa Macquarrie came upstairs hurriedly. She was smartly dressed in black with red roses and looked bright and brisk and happy.
“He has sent Benson with the carriage to ask us to drive down,” said Rosa. “Must have some engagement surely. Let us be off, dear. No time to lose.”
“Shall I go, I wonder?” said Glory, with a strange gravity.
“Indeed yes, dear. Why not? You've not been in good spirits lately, and it will do you good. Besides, you deserve a holiday after a six months' season. And then it's such a great day for him, too——”
“Very well, I'll go,” said Glory, and at that moment a twitch of her nervous fingers broke a button off one of the gloves. She drew it off, threw both gloves on to a side table, took up another pair that lay there, and followed Rosa downstairs. An open carriage was waiting for them in the outer court of the inn, and ten minutes afterward they drew up in a narrow street off Whitehall under a wide archway which opened into the large and silent quadrangle leading to the principal public offices. It was the Home Office; the carriage had come for Drake.
Drake had seen changes in his life too. His father was dead and he had succeeded to the baronetcy. He had also inherited a racing establishment which the family had long upheld, and a colt which had been entered for the Derby nearly three years ago was to run in the race that day. Its name was Ellan Vannin, and it was not a favourite. Notwithstanding the change in his fortunes, Drake still held his position of private secretary to the Secretary of State, but it was understood that he was shortly to enter public life under the wing of the Government, and to stand for the first constituency that became vacant. Ministers predicted a career for him; there was nothing he might not aspire to, and hardly anything he might not do.