I looked round. It was Fermin. Just the man I wanted to see.

He seemed depressed. Even embarra.s.sed.

"How's the column?" I asked.

"Oh, all right," he said awkwardly. "I wanted to see you about that. I was going to write to you."

"Oh, yes," I said, "of course. About the holiday work. When are you off?"

"I was thinking of starting next week."

"Good. Sorry to lose you, of course, but----"

He shuffled his feet.

"You're doing pretty well now at the game, aren't you, Cloyster?" he said.

It was not to my interests to cry myself down, so I said that I was doing quite decently. He seemed relieved.

"You're making quite a good income, I suppose? I mean, no difficulty about placing your stuff?"

"Editors squeal for it."

"Because, otherwise what I wanted to say to you might have been something of a blow. But it won't affect you much if you're doing plenty of work elsewhere."

A cold hand seemed laid upon my heart. My mind leaped to what he meant. Something had gone wrong with the _Orb_ holiday work, my sheet-anchor.

"Do you remember writing a par about Stickney, the b.u.t.ter-scotch man, you know, ragging him when he got his peerage?"

"Yes."

It was one of the best paragraphs I had ever done. A two-line thing, full of point and sting. I had been editing "On Your Way" that day, Fermin being on a holiday and Gresham ill; and I had put the paragraph conspicuously at the top of the column.

"Well," said Fermin, "I'm afraid there was rather trouble about it.

Hamilton came into our room yesterday, and asked if I should be seeing you. I said I thought I should. 'Well, tell him,' said Hamilton, 'that that paragraph of his about Stickney has only cost us five hundred pounds. That's all.' And he went out again. Apparently Stickney was on the point of advertising largely with the _Orb_, and had backed out in a huff. Today, I went to see him about my holiday, and he wanted to know who was coming in to do my work. I mentioned you, and he absolutely refused to have you in. I'm awfully sorry about it."

I was silent. The shock was too great. Instead of drifting easily into my struggle on a comfortable weekly salary, I should have to start the tooth-and-nail fighting at once. I wanted to get away somewhere by myself, and grapple with the position.

I said good-bye to Fermin, retaining sufficient presence of mind to treat the thing lightly, and walked swiftly along the restless Strand, marvelling at what I had suffered at the hands of Fortune. The deceiver of Margaret, deceived by Eva, a pauper! I covered the distance between Groom's and Walpole Street in sombre meditation.

In a sort of dull panic I sat down immediately on my arrival, and tried to work. I told myself that I must turn out something, that it would be madness to waste a moment.

I sat and chewed my pen from two o'clock till five, but not a page of printable stuff could I turn out. Looking back at myself at that moment, I am not surprised that my ideas did not flow. It would have been a wonderful triumph of strength of mind if I had been able to write after all that had happened. Dr. Johnson has laid it down that a man can write at any time, if he sets himself to it earnestly; but mine were exceptional circ.u.mstances. My life's happiness and my means for supporting life at all, happy or otherwise, had been swept away in a single morning; and I found myself utterly unable to pen a coherent sentence.

At five o'clock I gave up the struggle, and rang for tea.

While I was having tea there was a ring at the bell, and my landlady brought in a large parcel.

I recognised the writing on the label. The hand was Margaret's. I wondered in an impersonal sort of way what Margaret could be sending to me. From the feel of it the contents were paper.

It amuses me now to think that it was a good half-hour before I took the trouble to cut the string. Fortune and happiness were waiting for me in that parcel, and I would not bother to open it. I sat in my chair, smoking and thinking, and occasionally cast a gloomy eye at the parcel. But I did not open it. Then my pipe went out, and I found that I had no matches in my pocket. There were some at the farther end of the mantelpiece. I had to get up to reach them, and, once up, I found myself filled with a sufficient amount of energy to take a knife from the table and cut the string.

Languidly I undid the brown paper. The contents were a pile of typewritten pages and a letter.

It was the letter over which my gla.s.sy eyes travelled first.

"My own dear, brave, old darling James," it began, and its purport was that she had written a play, and wished me to put my name to it and hawk it round: to pa.s.s off as my work her own amateurish effort at playwriting. Ludicrous. And so immoral, too. I had always imagined that Margaret had a perfectly flawless sense of honesty. Yet here she was asking me deliberately to impose on the credulity of some poor, trusting theatrical manager. The dreadful disillusionment of it shocked me.

Most men would have salved their wounded susceptibilities by putting a match to the ma.n.u.script without further thought or investigation.

But I have ever been haunted by a somewhat over-strict conscience, and I sat down there and then to read the stupid stuff.

At seven o'clock I was still reading.

My dinner was brought in. I bolted it with Margaret's play propped up against the potato dish.

I read on and on. I could not leave it. Incredible as it would appear from anyone but me, I solemnly a.s.sure you that the typewritten nonsense I read that evening was nothing else than _The Girl who Waited_.

CHAPTER 25

BRIGGS TO THE RESCUE _(James Orlebar Cloyster's narrative continued)_

I finished the last page, and I laid down the typescript reverently.

The thing amazed me. Unable as I was to turn out a good acting play of my own, I was, nevertheless, sufficiently gifted with an appreciation of the dramatic to be able to recognise such a play when I saw it.

There were situations in Margaret's comedy which would grip a London audience, and force laughter and tears from it.... Well, the public side of that idiotic play is history. Everyone knows how many nights it ran, and the Press from time to time tells its readers what were the profits from it that accrued to the author.

I turned to Margaret's letter and re-read the last page. She put the thing very well, very sensibly. As I read, my scruples began to vanish.

After all, was it so very immoral, this little deception that she proposed?

"I have written down the words," she said; "but the conception is yours. The play was inspired by you. But for you I should never have begun it." Well, if she put it like that----

"You alone are able to manage the business side of the production. You know the right men to go to. To approach them on behalf of a stranger's work is far less likely to lead to success."

(True, true.)

"I have a.s.sumed, you will see, that the play is certain to be produced.

But that will only be so if you adopt it as your own,"

(There was sense in this.)

"Claim the authorship, and all will be well."

"I will," I said.