Part 22 (2/2)

Suddenly I came to a halt. Why _this_ play? Why expend vain efforts on this particular complication when in a drawer at home lay two acts of a comedy ready written, and the third and final act sketched out? The burden of months broke its straps and fell from me as I pondered. _My Tenant_ was the name of the thing, and I had thrust it aside only when the idea of _Larks in Aspic_ occurred to me--not in any disgust. And really, now, what I remembered of it seemed to me astonis.h.i.+ngly good!

I pulled out my watch, and as I did so there flashed on me--in that sudden freakish way which the best ideas affect--a new and brilliant idea for the plot of _My Tenant_. The whole of the third and concluding act spread itself instantaneously before me. I knew then and there why the play had been laid aside. It had waited for this, and it wanted only this. I held the thing now, compact and tight, within my five fingers: as tight and compact as the mechanism of the watch in my hand.

But why had I pulled out the watch? Because the ma.n.u.script of _My Tenant_ lay in the drawer of my writing-table in the Cromwell Road, and I was calculating how quickly a telegram would reach Trewlove with instructions to find and forward it. Then I bethought me that the lock was a patent one, and that I carried the key with me on my private key-chain. Why should I not cross from Calais by the next boat and recover my treasure? It would be the sooner in my possession. I might be reading it again that very night in my own home and testing my discovery.

I might return with it on the morrow--that is, if I desired to return.

After all, Ambleteuse had failed me. In London, I could shut myself up and work at white heat. In London, I should be near Cozens: a telegram would fetch him out to South Kensington within the hour, to listen and approve. (I had no doubt of his approval.) In London, I should renew relations with the real Trewlove--the familiar, the absurd. I will not swear that for the moment I thought of Trewlove at all: but he remained at the back of my mind, and at Calais I began the process of precipitating him (so to speak) by a telegram advertising him of my return, and requesting that my room might be prepared.

I had missed the midday boat, and reached Dover by the later and slower one as the June night began to descend. From Victoria I drove straight to my club, and s.n.a.t.c.hed a supper of cold meats in its half-lit dining-room.

Twenty minutes later I was in my hansom again and swiftly bowling westward--I say 'bowling' because it is the usual word, and I was in far too fierce a hurry to think of a better.

I had dropped back upon London in the fastest whirl of the season, and at the hour when all the world rolls homeward from the theatres. Two hansoms raced with mine, and red lights by the score dotted the n.o.ble slope of Piccadilly. To the left the street-lamps flung splashes of theatrical green on the sombre boughs of the Green Park. In one of the porticos to the right half a dozen guests lingered for a moment and laughed together before taking their leave. One of them stood on the topmost steps, lighting a cigarette: he carried his silk-lined Inverness over his arm--so sultry the night was--and the ladies wore but the slightest of wraps over their bright frocks and jewels. One of them as we pa.s.sed stepped forward, and I saw her dismissing her brougham. A night for walking, thought the party: and a fine night for sleeping out of doors, thought the road-watchman close by, watching them and meditatively smoking behind his barricade hung with danger-lanterns. Overhead rode the round moon.

It is the fas.h.i.+on to cry down London, and I have taken my part in the chorus; but always--be the absence never so short--I come back to her with the same lift of the heart. Why did I ever leave her? What had I gone a-seeking in Ambleteuse?--a place where a man leaves his room only to carry his writing-desk with him and plant it by the sea. London offered the only true recreation. In London a man might turn the key on himself and work for so long as it pleased him. But let him emerge, and--pf!--the jostle of the streets shook his head clear of the whole stuffy business.

No; decidedly I would not return to Madame Peyron's. London for me, until my comedy should be written, down to the last word on the last page!

We were half way down the Cromwell Road when I took this resolution, and at once I was aware of a gathering of carriages drawn up in line ahead and close beside the pavement. At intervals the carriages moved forward a few paces and the line closed up; but it stretched so far that I soon began to wonder which of my neighbours could be entertaining on a scale so magnificent.

”What number did you say, sir?” the cabman asked through his trap.

”Number 402,” I called up.

”Blest if I can get alongside the pavement then,” he grumbled.

He was a surly man.

”Never mind that. Pull up opposite Number 402 and I'll slip between.

I've only my bag to carry.”

”Didn't know folks was so gay in these outlyin' parts,” he commented sourly, and closed the trap, but presently opened it again.

His horse had dropped to a walk. ”Did you say four-nought-two?” he asked.

”Oh, confound it--yes!” I was growing impatient.

He pulled up and began to turn the horse's head.

”Hi! What are you doing?”

”Goin' back to the end of the line--back to take our bloomin' turn,” he answered wearily. ”Four-nought-two, you said, didn't you?”

”Yes, yes; are you deaf? What have I to do with this crowd?”

”I hain't deaf, but I got eyes. Four-nought-two's where the horning's up, that's all.”

”The horning? What's that?”

”Oh, I'm tired of egsplanations. A horning's a horning, what they put up when they gives a party; leastways,” he added reflectively, ”_Hi_ don't.”

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