A few days after the public had been informed of the Duke of Paddington's extraordinary and terrible experiences, Mr. Aubrey Flood sat in his private room at the theatre. It was twelve o'clock noon, and he was dictating some letters to his secretary. The room was large and comfortable, and was reached by a short pa.s.sage at the back of the dress circle. The walls were hung with framed photographs, many of them of great size, and signed by names which were famous in the dramatic world.

There was a curious likeness to each other in all these photographs, when one regarded them closely. Men and women of entirely different faces and figures had all, nevertheless, the same curiously _conscious_ look lurking in the eyes and pose. They seemed well aware, in their beauty of face and figure or splendour of costume, that they were there for one purpose--to be looked at.

Here and there the photographs were diversified by valuable old play-bills in gold frames, and close to the door was a page torn out of a ledger, the writing now faded and brown with years. It was a salary list of some forgotten provincial theatre, and the names of famous actors--at the time it was written utterly unknown to fame--were set down there in a thin, old-fashioned script. Heading the list one saw "Henry Irving, 1 10s. 0d.," the weekly salary at that date of, perhaps, the greatest actor England has ever known.

A huge writing-table was covered with papers, and there were two telephones, one hanging upon the wall, the other resting on its plated stand upon the table. Upon another table, much higher than the ordinary, and standing at one side of the room was a complete model theatre.

Carefully executed studies of scenery half a yard square lay by the side of the model, and a complete miniature tableau had been built up upon the tiny stage, while the characters of the toy drama were represented by the little oblong cubes of wood, variously coloured.

To complete the picture, it should be stated that, by the side of Mr.

Aubrey Flood, nearer, indeed, to him than the telephone, stood a square bottle of cut-gla.s.s, a tumbler, and a syphon of soda-water.

There was a knock at the door, and the stage door-keeper entered with a card.

"Mr. Lionel C. Westwood, to see you, sir," he said.

"Ask him to come in at once," Flood answered.

Mr. Lionel C. Westwood had, more or less, created his own profession, which was that of a very special sort of theatrical journalist. He had been tried for dramatic criticism on more than one paper, but had abandoned this form of writing for what he speedily found to be the more lucrative one of collecting early dramatic intelligence. He wrote, too, the column of Green Room Gossip in more than one important paper, and was, indeed, of extreme use to managers who wished to contradict a rumour or to start one.

He came hurriedly into the room--a short, easy, alert young man, wearing a voluminous frock-coat, and with a mixed aspect of extreme hurry and cordiality.

"Oh, my dear Aubrey," he said, shaking the manager's hand with effusive geniality, "so here you are! Directly I saw the paragraph in the _Wire_ I wrote to you, asking for fuller information. Now, you won't mind telling me all there is to know, will you?"

"Sit down, Lionel," said the actor. "Will you have a drink?"

"No, thank you," replied the little man, "I never take anything in the morning. Now, what is all this? What are you going to do? What are you going to produce? That's what I want to know. All London is wondering!"

He rapped with his fingers upon the table, and his face suddenly a.s.sumed a curiously ferret-like look "What is it, Aubrey, dear boy?" he concluded.

Flood leant back in his chair and lit a cigarette.

"It is a very big thing indeed, Lionel," he said, "and I don't know, dear boy, that I should be justified in letting you into it just yet.

Why, we only read the play to the company this afternoon!"

Mr. Lionel C. Westwood's ears seemed positively to twitch as he elicited this first piece of information.

"Oh!" he said, with a sudden gleam of satisfaction. "Well, that is something, at any rate. That is an item, Aubrey."

"I am afraid that is as far as I shall be able to go," the shrewd manager replied.

This little comedy progressed for some twenty minutes, until at last Mr.

Lionel C. Westwood was worked up into the right state of frantic curiosity and excitement. Then Aubrey Flood explained dimly the purpose and scope of the new play, hinted reluctantly at the achievement of a new star, a young actress of wonderful power and extreme beauty, who had hitherto been quite unknown in the provinces, and finally, with a gush of friendship, "Well, as it is you, Lionel, dear boy, though I would not do it for anybody else," promised the journalist that he might come to the theatre again that afternoon and form one of the privileged few, in addition to the company itself, who would be present at the reading of the play by its author, Mr. James Fabian Rose.

Mr. Lionel C. Westwood went away more than contented, and Aubrey Flood resumed his correspondence. The train was laid and the match was applied to it. The _Daily Wire_, of course, was at the disposal of the syndicate, and would further its objects in every way through Mr.

Goodrick. At the same time, the editor was quite shrewd enough to know that his paper was more particularly read by the middle-cla.s.ses, and content to sacrifice items of excessive interest concerning the play in order that it might be widely advertised.

For they were all very greatly in earnest, these people. Even Aubrey Flood himself, while he was business man enough to regard this speculation as an excellent one, and believe that he would make a great deal of money over it, was nevertheless about to produce this epoch-making play from a real and earnest adherence to the doctrines it was to inculcate.

There is a general opinion that your actor-manager and your actor are persons consumed by two inherent thirsts--applause and money. In a sense--perhaps in a very general sense--this is true, but there are still those actors and actresses whose life is not entirely occupied with their own personality and chances of success. In the most egotistical of all occupations there are yet men and women who are animated by the spirit of altruism, and the hope of helping a great movement. Aubrey Flood was one of these men. He was as convinced a Socialist as Fabian Rose himself. He was enlisted under that banner, and he was prepared to go to any length to uphold it in the forefront of the great battle which was imminent. At the same time, Mr. Aubrey Flood saw no reason why propaganda should not pay!

He was dictating his letters, when once more the stage door-keeper came into the room with another card. It was that of Miss Mary Marriott.

Flood started.

"Show Miss Marriott in at once," he said, and his face changed a little, while a new light of interest came into his eyes.

Your theatrical manager is not, as a rule, a person very susceptible to the charms of the ladies with whom he is constantly a.s.sociated, though perhaps that is not quite the best way to put it. He is susceptible, but in a somewhat cynical and contemptuous way. The conquests in the world of the limelight are not always too difficult, and a man who pursues them out of habit and inclination very often learns to put a low figure upon achievement. But in the case of Mary Marriott, Aubrey Flood, who was no better or no worse than his colleagues, had felt differently. It does not necessarily mean that when a manager makes love to his leading lady, or to any lady in his company, he necessarily has the slightest real emotion in doing so. It is, indeed, part of the day's work, and half of the day's necessity. That is all.

But Flood had never met any one like Mary Marriott before. He was impressed by her beauty; he recognised her talent; he believed absolutely in her artistic capacities. At the same time he found himself feeling for this girl something to which he had long been a stranger--a feeling of reverence, or perhaps chivalry, would more easily describe it.

Yes, when he was with her he remembered his younger days when, as a boyish undergraduate from Oxford, he had played tennis with the daughters of the squire on the lawns of his father's rectory. Then all women pa.s.sably fair and pa.s.sably young had been mysterious G.o.ddesses.

Mary Marriott sometimes brought the hardened and cynical man of the world, whose only real pa.s.sion was for the cause of Socialism, back to the ideals of his youth, and he counted himself fortunate that fate had thrown her in his way.

Mary came into the room. He rose and shook her heartily by the hand.

"My dear Miss Marriott," he said--an intimate of his would have noticed a slight change in his way of addressing her, for to most lady members of his company he would have said "my dear," "to what do I owe this call? I thought we were all going to meet at half-past two to hear the play read! Do sit down."

Mary smiled at him. She liked Mr. Flood. She knew the sickening familiarities of the men who had controlled some of the companies in which she had been.

At first it had been horrible, then she had become a little accustomed and blunted to it. She had endured without any signs of outrage the familiar touch upon the arm, the bold intimacy of voice and manner. It was refreshing now to meet a man who behaved to her as a gentleman behaves to a lady in a society where the footlights are not.

In fact, everything was refreshing, new, and exhilarating to Mary now, since that day, that terrible day of fog and gloom, when, after her long and perilous search for an engagement she had sat in her little attic flat in Bloomsbury and the mustard-bearded man had knocked at the door with all the suddenness of wonder of the fairy G.o.dmother herself to Cinderella.

She sat down, and there was a moment's pause.

"Well, do you know, Mr. Flood," she said at length, hesitating a little, and feeling embarra.s.sed, "I have come to ask you a most extraordinary favour."

All sorts of ideas crossed the swift, cinematographic mind of the manager. It could not be that she wanted an advance of salary, because all the company were to be paid for rehearsals, and directly the contract had been signed with him and Fabian Rose, Mary Marriott's half-salary had begun. It could not be that she wanted more "fat" in the part, because she realised the rigidity of Rose's censorship in such a matter; and, besides, she was too much an artist to want the centre of the stage all the time. What could it be? His face showed nothing of his thoughts. All he said was, "Miss Marriott, I am sure you will not ask me anything that I shall not be able to grant."

"But I think on this occasion you might have some difficulty, Mr.

Flood," Mary answered, with half a smile--the man thought he had never seen such charm and such self-possession.

Her voice was like a silver bell, heard far away on a mountain side. No, it wasn't, it was like water falling into water--like a tiny waterfall, falling into a deep, translucent pool in a wood!

"Go on, Miss Marriott," he replied, with a smile.

"I want to bring some one to the reading of the play this afternoon,"

she said.

"That is all right," he answered; "but provided, of course, that your friend will not divulge anything about the play more than we allow him to do. Why, I have just given little Lionel C. Westwood permission to come and hear the play read. Of course, Mr. Rose must have a say in the matter. But who do you want to bring?"

"I have asked Mr. Rose," Mary replied. "I saw him this morning, and he raised no objections, provided only that you gave your consent."

"Well, then, it is a foregone conclusion," Flood returned; "but who is it?"

"Well," Mary answered, "it is the Duke of Paddington."

Aubrey Flood looked at her for a moment, his eyes wide with amazement.

"The man himself! By Jove!" he said, "the very man! Do you think this is wise?"