“I can't keep her on the ragged side of uncertainty. I'll go back; unless soon there is a change for the better in my prospects.” There was an abrupt pause. His voice had broken on the last word.
For a time we sat in silence, and when he spoke again it was cheerfully and of other things.
A few days later Gavan left the shelter of Mrs. Tauton's roof and went farther down-town, where he had rooms with an old shoemaker and his wife, who were “just as good and kind as could be,” he informed me; and I think they were, but the apartments he had quitted were palatial by comparison with those he now had.
About the same time I made a move in the opposite direction toward my former mild respectability.
One Sunday he came to my lodgings, his face radiant. At last a play was accepted. There were only a few minor changes to be made; he could do them in a week or so, and then the company would begin to get up in their parts.
“I shan't have to quit and go home after all,” he said. “I've written mother all about it. I'd give a good deal to be there and enjoy it with her. It would be such fun! Perhaps it isn't many months off till she can join me here, and then, old fellow, you are to come and live with us.”
This last was one of his favorite ideas for the future. When he felt elated or particularly hopeful it was always broached, and it was characteristic of his general goodness that he wished to share all he had, or was to have, with his friends.
When I saw him a week later his work was progressing and the play would surely go on before the season ended. But by our next meeting his hope had evidently moderated, for he looked downcast and troubled as he explained the production had to be deferred. “They haven't the money it will take. A heavy outlay for scenery is involved, you know. It will go on the first of the coming season, and that's about the most I can expect under the circumstances. In the meantime there's a lot of work I wish to do, so it doesn't much matter. I can wait, only”—and his glance became tender—“it will go hard with mother. She won't understand why it's not as I said it was going to be.”
Unfortunately, when the manager returned from his summer trip abroad, he brought with him from Paris the success of a thousand nights.
“He will do that at once, and then try mine. He really prefers my work, but thinks that more immediate profits are to be expected from the French piece,” Gavan told me, and this was all he had to say.