Herold's reply was checked by the creaking of the door and the entrance of the bent figure of an old member, a county court judge who, on his way to a writing-table by the window, nodded courteously to the two younger men and remarked that it was a fine day.
“I suppose most people would call it so,” said John.
“Don't you?”
“I hate it,” cried John. “I wish it would rain. I wish it would rain like the devil. I would give my ears for a pea-soup fog. Sunshine is too blightingly ironical in this country.”
The old judge lifted his eyebrows. “The metaphysics of meteorology are beyond me,” he said, with a smile and a bow, and sat down to write.
John lingered for a second or two by the side of his friend, tracing the pattern of the Turkey carpet with the toe of his boot; then he swung round abruptly.
“Excuse me,” said he. “I 've got to look at Baxter's imbecile article in 'The Contemporary.' ”
He went to the table where the current magazines and reviews were tidily displayed, and Herold, sitting in an arm-chair some distance away, with his back to the table, pondered over the discussion that had just taken place. But for the rumble and clatter of London that came through the open windows, the ceaseless choric ode to all the drama of the vast city, there was silence in the spacious room, broken only by the scratching of the old judge's quill pen. Herold resumed his aimless skimming of the evening newspaper. What further appeal could he make to John in his contradictory and violent mood?
At last the old judge, having scribbled his note, got up and left the room. Herold turned and found himself alone. John had gone without drum or trumpet. In the lounge down-stairs there was no John, and in the hall the porter told him that Mr. Risca had left the club.
He went home to his actor's six o'clock dinner, and found a letter from Lady Blount imploring him to come to Southcliff at once. Stella was getting worse day by day. Sir Oliver and she were in despair, Dr. Ransome was at his wits' ends. In a woman's frantic helplessness she adjured him to come and work a miracle. Now, it so happened that on the early afternoon of the next day he had a very important appointment. It was a question of his going into nominal management in the autumn. Suitable pieces, a theatre, and financial backers, obscure but vital elements in theatrical business, had been found, and it was with these last that the morrow's all-important interview was to take place. He turned up the railway time-table, and saw that by leaving London by the first train in the morning, and probably skipping lunch, he could spend a couple of hours in Southcliff and get back in time for his engagement. He telegraphed to Lady Blount, dined, and went to the theatre. For perhaps the first time in his pleasant life he was overwhelmed that evening by the sense of the futility of his work, which every artist, actor, painter, and poet is doomed to feel at times. The painted faces of his colleagues, the vain canvas of the sets, the stereotyped words, gestures, inflections, repeated without variation for more than the two hundredth time, the whole elaborate make-believe of life that at once is, and is not, the theatre,—all this oppressed him, filled him with shame and disgust. It had no meaning. It was an idle show. He had given to inanity a life that might have been devoted to the pursuit of noble ideals.