“Great Scott! who on earth else?—the editor?” laughed Bentnor, little dreaming what the few words meant to the distraught man before him. “Perhaps you think I can’t do that sort of thing! It’s in our blood, the love of the buskin. The fact is, I’ve always had my suspicions that in the time of Charles the Second—well, never mind. We had our last final farewell dress rehearsal the night you came on here. I tell you I’m great in it. Helen, to be sure, does fairly well as Hester Piozzi, but wait till you see me as Mr. Stillingfleet! You know he was the fellow whose grayish-blue stockings gave the name for all time to ‘blue-stocking’ clubs. He and Dr. Johnson were always buzzing around the literary women of that day, the pretty D’Arblay, the dignified Mistress Montague of Portman Square, and the great Piozzi herself—of course, you remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” whispered Robert, his face once more hidden, but a great peace possessing him. “Ben,” he cried, almost joyfully, “what’s the title of Helen’s play?”
“Bas Bleu,” said Bentnor, concealing his triumph at his own tactics in the lighting of his twenty-third cigarette.
Robert groaned, and his head again drooped in unspeakable humiliation. And in that moment he made up his mind that no one should ever share his guilty secret. To make a pathetic appeal to Helen, dwelling upon his love, his doubts, his torturing jealousy, was one thing; quite another to tell that hopelessly humorous, refusing-to-be-pathetic story of those ridiculous bas bleus—they dangled everywhere from every point of his story; flying, pirouetting, circling and pin-wheeling in a psychic pas seul! It was impossible for even a member of the firm of Flagg, Bentnor & Penn to be impressive. Let them call it a nervous breakdown, his lips were forever sealed.
Then the thought of his home came to him like distant music. He saw himself opening his door; he saw a small ball of white coming down the stairs backward in a terrifying fury of speed, the little, fat, half-bare legs and a swirl of tiny skirts all that was visible of his wee daughter coming to greet him. He saw himself catch her off the last step and lift her in his arms, burying his face against the baby’s hot, panting little body, then he heard Helen’s voice and the sound of her scurrying feet!
Robert sprang up, and with a burst of wild laughter, shouted:
“Ben, let’s go home! I believe you’re dead right—I’ve got nervous prostration, and I’ve got it bad!”
THE VAGABOND
Your arms have held me till they seemed my home.