It brought me out of my chair. I started to get the ring at once, but I could not remember where it was. I stood still, trying to think.

Then suddenly that came to me, too. It was down in the corner of my biggest trunk, the one I had not unpacked, the one that holds all my winter things. So I unpacked it--and here is the ring.'

"She held it out. It was a heavy gold band with a raised Latin inscription on its outer surface. The editor took it in her hand, but her mind held only one idea.

"'You unpacked that great trunk,' she gasped, 'this frightfully hot day? With all those furs and flannels? Why, Mrs. Driscoll, how _could_ you do such a thing?'

"The old woman drew a deep breath. 'I had to,' she muttered. Her eyebrows puckered. Plainly, she was puzzled and a little afraid. 'I felt I had to,' she repeated. 'It seemed,' she added, slowly, 'almost like a message from my daughter!'

"The editor turned the ring in her hand and looked at the Latin inscription, and as she did so she saw again, not the face of the beautiful woman who had come to her after her downfall, but the quiet convent chapel in which she herself had knelt that afternoon. A little chill ran the length of her spine. For there were three words on the ring."

The Diplomat leaned forward. "That's interesting," he said. "I didn't know about the inscription. The three words were--"

"'_Adveniat Regnum Tuum_,'" said the editor.

"'Thy Kingdom Come,'" translated the Best Seller, swiftly, proud of his Latin. "By Jove, the editor got her message, didn't she? I like your ending, Miss Iverson. But it doesn't prove the original point."

The Playwright leaned across the table. "Doesn't it?" she asked, gently. "Then show them the ring, May."

I drew the heavy circle from my finger. In silence it was pa.s.sed from palm to palm. The glance of the blue-eyed woman touched the face of the Playwright, the Diplomat, and the Author and rested on me. Then she drew a deep breath.

"So it's true!" she said. "You four saw it work out! Where is Mrs.

Driscoll now?"

"In the Emerson Home for Gentlewomen," the Diplomat told her. "The best, I think, in this country. You ran out to see her last week, didn't you, Ba.s.singer?"

The Author admitted the charge. "She's very happy there," he said.

At his table at the head of the room our host was on his feet. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began--

But the Best Seller was whispering to me. "It wasn't exactly telepathy," he said, "for no one but the old lady knew anything about that ring. It was just an odd coincidence that sent her burrowing into furs and moth-b.a.l.l.s that hot day. But you can make a story of it, Miss Iverson--a good one, too, if you'll work in a lot of drama and pathos."

XI

"T. B." CONDUCTS A REHEARSAL

The stage director rose and rolled up his copy of the play, pushing toward me with his disengaged hand the half-dozen round white peppermints which, arranged on a chalk-lined blue blotter, had been chastely representing my most important characters in their most vital scene. His smooth, round face was pale with fatigue; the glow of his brown eyes had been dimmed by sleepless nights; he had the weary air of a patient man who has listened to too much talk--but not for one moment had he lost his control of the situation or of us.

"That might have made a better picture," he conceded, graciously. "But we can't make any more changes till after the dress rehearsal to-night; and if that goes well we won't want to make any. Don't you worry, Miss Iverson. We've got a winner!"

This, coming from Herbert Elman at the close of our last official conference, was as merciful rain to a parched field, but I was too weary to respond to it, except by a tired smile. Under its stimulation, however, our star, who had been drooping forward in her chair surveying the peppermints much as Lady Macbeth must have gazed upon the stain on her hand, blossomed in eager acknowledgment.

"Bertie, you are a trump!" she exclaimed, gratefully. "It's simply wonderful how you keep up your enthusiasm after three weeks of work.

It was criminal of Miss Iverson and me to drag you here this afternoon. I suppose we had lost our nerve, but that doesn't excuse us."

Elman had started for the door on the cue of his valedictory. At her words he turned and came back to the desk where we sat together, his face stamped with a sudden look of purpose; and upon my little study, in which for the past three hours we had wrangled over a dozen unimportant details, a hush fell, as if now, at last, something had entered which was real and vital. For an instant he stood before us, looking down at us with eyes that held an unaccustomed sternness. Then he spoke.

"I had a few words to say to you two when I came here," he began, "but you were both so edgy that I changed my mind. However, if you're talking about losing your nerve you need them, and I'm going to get them off my chest."

Miss Merrick interrupted him, her blue eyes widening like those of a hurt baby.

"Oh, Bertie," she begged, "p-please don't say anything disagreeable.

Here we've been rehearsing for weeks, and we three still speak. We're _al-most_ friendly. And now, at the eleventh hour, you're going to spoil everything!"

Her words came out in a little wail. She dropped her head in her hands with a gesture of utter fatigue.

"You are," she ended. "You know you are, and I'm _so-o_ tired!"

Elman laughed. No one ever took Stella Merrick seriously, except during her hours on the stage when she ceased to be Stella Merrick at all and entered the soul of the character she was impersonating.

"Nonsense," he said, brusquely. "I'm going to show my friendship by giving you a pointer, that's all."

Miss Merrick drew a deep breath and twisted the corner of her mouth toward me--a trick I had learned from Nestor Hurd five years ago and had unconsciously taught her in the past three weeks.

"Oh, if that's all!" she murmured, in obvious relief.

"You should have been in your beds the entire day," continued Elman, severely, "both of you, like the rest of the company. We'll rehea.r.s.e all night, and you know it; and I'll tell you right now," he added, pregnantly, "that you're going to be up against it."

He waited a moment to give his words the benefit of their c.u.mulative effect, and then added, slowly:

"Just before I came here this afternoon T. B. told me that to-night he intends to rehea.r.s.e the company himself."

I heard Stella Merrick gasp. The little sound seemed to come from a long distance, for the surprise of Elman's announcement had made me dizzy. "T. B." was our manager, better known as "The Governor" and "The Master." He had more friends, more enemies, more successes, more insight, more failures, more blindness, more mannerisms, more brutality, and more critics than any other man in the theatrical world. His specialty was the avoidance of details. He let others attend to these, and then, strolling in casually at the eleventh hour, frequently undid the labor to which they had given weeks.

Though his money was producing my play, I had met him only once; and this, I had been frequently a.s.sured by the company, had been the one redeeming feature of an unusually strenuous theatrical experience. "T.

B." never attended any but dress rehearsals, leaving everything to his stage directors until the black hours when he arrived to consider the results they had accomplished. It was not an infrequent thing for him on these occasions to disband the company and drop the play; that he should change part of the cast and most of the "business" seemed almost inevitable. For days I had been striving to accustom myself to the thought that during our dress rehearsal "T. B." would be sitting gloomily down in the orchestra, his eyes on the back drop, his chin on his breast, a victim to that profound depression which seized him when one of his new companies was rehearsing one of his new plays. At such times he was said to bear, at the best, a look of utter desolation; at the worst, that of a lost and suffering soul.

At long intervals, when Fate perversely chose to give her screw the final turn for an unhappy playwright, "T. B." himself conducted the last rehearsal, and for several months after one of these tragedies theatrical people meeting on Broadway took each other into quiet corners and discussed what had happened in awed whispers and with fearsome glances behind them. It had not occurred to any of us that "T. B." would be moved to conduct _our_ last rehearsal. This was his busiest season, and Elman was his most trusted lieutenant. Now, however, Elman's quiet voice was giving us the details of "T. B.'s"

intention, and as she listened Stella Merrick's face, paling slowly under the touch of rouge on the cheeks, took on something of the exaltation of one who dies gloriously for a Cause. She might not survive the experience, it seemed to say, but surely even death under the critical observation of "T. B." would take on some new dignity. If she died in "T. B.'s" presence, "T. B." would see that at least she did it "differently"!

"But, Bertie, that's _great_!" she exclaimed. "He must have a lot of faith in the play. He must have heard something. He hadn't any idea of conducting when I spoke to him yesterday."

"Oh yes, he had!" Elman's words fell on her enthusiasm as frost falls on a tree in bloom. "He didn't want to rattle you by saying so, that's all. And he isn't doing this work to-night because he's got faith in the play. It's more because he hasn't. He hasn't faith in anything just now. Three of his new plays have gone to the store-house this month, and he's in a beastly humor. You'll have the devil of a time with him."

Miss Merrick sprang to her feet and began to pace the study with restless steps.

"What are you trying to do?" she threw back at him over her shoulder.

"Take what little courage we have left?"

Elman shook his dark head.

"I'm warning you," he said, quietly. "I want you both to brace up.

You'll need all the nerve you've got, and then some, to get through what's before us. He'll probably have an entirely new idea of your part, Stella; and I don't doubt he'll want Miss Iverson to rewrite most of her play. But you'll both get through all right. You're not quitters, you know."

His brown eyes, pa.s.sing in turn from my face to hers, warmed at what he saw in them. When he began to speak we had been relaxed, depressed, almost discouraged. Lack of sleep, nervous strain, endless rehearsals had broken down our confidence and sapped our energy; but now, in the sudden lift of Stella Merrick's head, the quick straightening of her shoulders, I caught a reflection of the change that was taking place in me. At the first prospect of battle we were both as ready for action as Highland regiments when the bagpipes begin to snarl. Looking at us, Elman's pale face lit up with one of his rare and brilliant smiles.