The Socialist

On the morning of the next day, a bright winter's morning, the duke left the hospitable house in Westminster. It was with real regret and with a sense of parting from old friends that he said "Good-bye." Mary Marriott was there. She was now in constant confabulation with Rose every morning, and she formed one of the little group who assembled on the steps of the house in the quiet street behind the Abbey.

A huge motor brougham, with Lord Camborne's coronet upon the panels, was waiting there. A groom in motoring livery stood by the door. The chauffeur took off his hat as the duke came out. It was not often that such splendour was seen in that quarter. Then the brougham rolled swiftly away, and another page in the young man's life was turned over.

He did not drive straight to Lord Camborne's house, but told the chauffeur to stop at Gerrard's in Regent Street, the florist's, and went into the shop, where the great masses of hothouse flowers made the air all Arabia for him and all comers. His purchase of lilies and roses was so stupendous that even the imperturbable young ladies in that floral temple showed more than their usual interest.

Indeed, the house of the Socialist would be gay that afternoon, and Mrs. Rose would be surrounded by a perfect garden of the flowers whose name she bore – a delicate thankoffering.

In a few minutes more the duke arrived at Lord Camborne's house in Grosvenor Street.

Both his host and Lord Hayle were out, but Lady Constance received him.

"Now, you are going to be very quiet, and not talk much," she said. "We are going to be most careful of you, after what you have gone through. I cannot tell you, duke, how agitated we have all been about you. Poor Gerald has been nearly mad with anxiety. He is so fond of you, you know. What terrible things you have been through – first the accident, and then that awful horror!" She shuddered.

She was very fair as she stood there, in her simple morning gown, with all the beauty of sympathy added to her supreme loveliness. As the duke was shown to his own rooms he felt once more that throbbing pulsation, that sudden exhilaration, which he had known when Lady Constance had come to lunch at Paul's and he had seen her for the first time. She did not know, nor could he tell her, how star-like she had been in his thoughts during the long, dark hours of his captivity, and how it was the radiant vision of her, etched into his memory, which had given strength to his obstinacy and power to resist the demands of his tormentors.

CHAPTER XIV

AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE

The Park Lane Theatre in Oxford Street, about two hundred yards east of the Marble Arch, was one of the most successful houses of those many theatres which have sprung up in London during the last few years. Its reputation was thoroughly high-class, and more particularly that of a theatre patronised by Society. It was in fact, the St. James's of that quarter of London. Here was no pit, and the gallery seats were half-a-crown for example.

The long and successful run of a play at the Park Lane had just concluded, and the theatrical journalists were hazarding this or that surmise as to what would be next produced. For some reason or other there seemed to be a sort of mystery. The syndicate which owned the theatre would make no announcements through their manager, save only that the theatre had been let.

Inquiries elicited nothing. This or that well-known entrepreneur, when asked the question had denied that he was interested in any forthcoming production at the theatre. There was a good deal of speculation on the point, and the play-going public itself was beginning to be interested.

Then, one morning, there appeared in the Daily Wire a paragraph, displayed in a prominent position, which stated that the theatre had been leased to Mr. Aubrey Flood, the well-known actor-manager, and the paragraph – obviously inspired – went on to hint at a most sensational development, of which the public might shortly expect news in the columns of the great Radical daily.

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 passage 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-glass, 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 assumed 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-classes, 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 associated, 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 passably fair and passably young had been mysterious goddesses. Mary Marriott sometimes brought the hardened and cynical man of the world, whose only real passion 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 godmother 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 embarrassed, "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.