Part 27 (2/2)

One afternoon the duke had taken her and Mrs. Rose to Paddington House in Piccadilly, and showed the two ladies the treasures of the historic place. It was an old-standing promise, dating from the time of his illness at Westminster, that he should do so.

He had called for them in his motor-brougham, and they had noticed his restlessness and depression, both of which seemed accentuated. After a little while the young man's spirits began to improve, and he had not been with them for half an hour when he became bright and animated. In some subtle way he managed to convey to Mary--and she knew that she was not mistaken--a sense that he was glad to see her, glad to be with her, that he liked her.

When they were in the picture gallery Mrs. Rose had walked on a few yards to examine a Goya, and the two younger people were left alone for a minute.

”I have secured my box for the first performance of _The Socialist_, Miss Marriott,” the duke said.

Mary flushed a little, she could not help it. ”I am sure----” she began, and then hesitated as to what she should say.

”You mean that I had better not come,” the duke answered with a smile.

”Oh, I don't think I shall mind Rose's satire, judging from what I heard when the play was read, at any rate, and, besides, I quite understand that it is not I personally who am shot at so much as that I am unfortunately a sort of typical target. The papers I see are full of it and all my friends are chaffing me.”

Mary looked at him, her great eyes full of doubt and musing. There was something in his voice which touched her--a weariness, a sadness. ”I don't know,” she said, ”but I think it very likely that when you see the play as it is now you will find it hits harder than you expect. We are all very much in earnest. I think it is very good of you to come at all.

I hope at any rate that you will forgive me my part in it. You and I live in very different ways of life, but since we have met once or twice I should not like you to think hardly of me.”

She spoke perfectly sincerely, absolutely naturally, as few people ever spoke to him.

The duke's answer had been singular, and Mary did not forget it. ”Miss Marriott,” he said in a voice which suddenly became intensely earnest and vibrated strangely, ”let me say this, once and for all, Never, under any circ.u.mstances whatever, could I think hardly or unkindly of you. To be allowed to call myself your friend, if, indeed, I may be so allowed, is one of the greatest privileges I possess or ever can possess.”

He had been about to say more, and his eyes seemed eloquent with further words, when Mrs. Rose rejoined them. Mary heard him give a little weary sigh, saw the light die out of his eyes, and something strangely like resignation fall over his face.

She had wondered very much at the time what were the causes of the recent changes in the duke's manner, what trouble a.s.sailed him. When he had spoken to her in the picture gallery there had been almost a note of pleading in his voice. It hurt her at the time, and she had often recalled it since, more especially as she had seen nothing of him for some time. He had not been to see the Roses, and had, it seemed, quite dropped out of the life of Mary and her friends.

The girl was sorry, perhaps more sorry than she cared to admit to herself. Quite apart from the romance of their first meeting, without being in any way influenced by the unique circ.u.mstances of his rank and wealth, Mary liked the duke very much indeed. She liked him better, perhaps, than any other man she had ever met. It was always a pleasure to her to be in his society, and she made no disguise about it to herself.

Mary put down the ma.n.u.script of the play and glanced at the little carriage clock, covered in red leather, which stood on the mantelshelf.

It was eleven o'clock, and she had to be at the theatre at the half hour to meet Aubrey Flood and discuss some details of stage business with him. Then she was to lunch with the Roses at Westminster, after which she would return to the theatre and begin a rehearsal, which, with a brief interval for dinner, might last till any hour of the night.

She put on her hat and jacket, descended the various flights of stairs which led to her nest in the old Georgian mansion, and walked briskly towards Park Lane.

Mr. Flood had not yet arrived, she was told by the stage-door keeper, and thanking him she pa.s.sed down a short stone pa.s.sage and pushed open the swing door which led directly on to the stage itself.

She was in a meditative mood that morning, and as her feet tapped upon the boards of the huge empty s.p.a.ce she wondered if indeed she was destined to triumph there. Was this really to be the scene in which she would realise her life-long dreams or---- She put the ugly alternative away from her with a shudder and fell to considering her part, walking the boards and taking up this or that position upon them in solitary rehearsal.

The curtain was up and the enormous cavern of the auditorium in gloom, save only where a single pale shaft of sunlight filtered through a circular window in the roof. The brown holland which covered all the seats and gilding seemed like some ghostly audience. To Mary's right, on the prompt side of the proscenium, a man stood upon a little railed-in platform some eight feet above the stage-floor level. He was an electrician, and was busy with the frame of black vulcanite, full four feet square and covered with taps and switches of bra.s.s. From here the operator would control all the lights of the stage as the play went on.

A click, and the moon would rise over the garden and flood it with soft, silver light; a handle turned this way or that, and the lights of the mimic scene would rise or die and flood the stage with colour--colour fitted to the emotion of the moment, as the music of the orchestra would be fitted to it also--science invoked once more to aid the great illusion.

Mary looked up at the man and the thought came to her swiftly. Yes, it was illusion, a strange and dream-like phantasma of the truth! She herself was a shadow in a dream, moving through unrealities, animated by art, so that the dream should take shape and colour, and the others--the real people--on the other side of the footlights should learn their lesson and take a forceful memory home. It was a strange and confusing thought, remote from actuality, as her mood was at that moment. She looked upwards into a haze of light, far away among the network of beams and ropes and hanging scenery of the ”grid.”

A narrow-railed bridge crossed the open s.p.a.ce nearly forty feet above her. Two men in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves were standing there talking, small and far away. They seemed like sailors on the yard of a s.h.i.+p, seen from the deck below.

The girl had seen it all a thousand times before, under every aspect of s.h.i.+fting light and colour, but to-day it had a certain unfamiliarity and strangeness. She realised that she was not quite herself, her usual self, this morning, though for what reason she could not divine. Perhaps the strain of hard work, of opening her mind to new impressions and ideals, was beginning to tell a little upon her. Life had changed too suddenly for her, perhaps, and, above all, there was the abiding sense of waiting and expectation. Her triumph or her failure were imminent.

One thing or the other would a.s.suredly happen. But, meanwhile, the waiting was trying, and she longed for the moment of fruition--this way or that.

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