"Has it gone?--HAS it gone?" he gasped to the people round him; and he heard them say "Rather--rather!" perfunctorily, mendaciously too, as it struck him, and even with mocking laughter, the laughter of defeat and despair. Suddenly, though all this must have taken but a moment, Loder burst upon him from somewhere with a "For God's sake don't keep them, or they'll STOP!" "But I can't go on for THAT!"Wayworth cried, in anguish; the sound seemed to him already to have ceased. Loder had hold of him and was shoving him; he resisted and looked round frantically for Violet Grey, who perhaps would tell him the truth. There was by this time a crowd in the wing, all with strange grimacing painted faces, but Violet was not among them and her very absence frightened him. He uttered her name with an accent that he afterwards regretted--it gave them, as he thought, both away;and while Loder hustled him before the curtain he heard some one say "She took her call and disappeared." She had had a call, then--this was what was most present to the young man as he stood for an instant in the glare of the footlights, looking blindly at the great vaguely-peopled horseshoe and greeted with plaudits which now seemed to him at once louder than he deserved and feebler than he desired. They sank to rest quickly, but he felt it to be long before he could back away, before he could, in his turn, seize the manager by the arm and cry huskily--"Has it really gone--REALLY?"Mr. Loder looked at him hard and replied after an instant: "The play's all right!"Wayworth hung upon his lips. "Then what's all wrong?""We must do something to Miss Grey."
"What's the matter with her?"
"She isn't IN it!"
"Do you mean she has failed?"
"Yes, damn it--she has failed."
Wayworth stared. "Then how can the play be all right?""Oh, we'll save it--we'll save it."
"Where's Miss Grey--where IS she?" the young man asked.
Loder caught his arm as he was turning away again to look for his heroine. "Never mind her now--she knows it!"Wayworth was approached at the same moment by a gentleman he knew as one of Mrs. Alsager's friends--he had perceived him in that lady's box. Mrs. Alsager was waiting there for the successful author; she desired very earnestly that he would come round and speak to her.
Wayworth assured himself first that Violet had left the theatre--one of the actresses could tell him that she had seen her throw on a cloak, without changing her dress, and had learnt afterwards that she had, the next moment, flung herself, after flinging her aunt, into a cab. He had wished to invite half a dozen persons, of whom Miss Grey and her elderly relative were two, to come home to supper with him;but she had refused to make any engagement beforehand (it would be so dreadful to have to keep it if she shouldn't have made a hit), and this attitude had blighted the pleasant plan, which fell to the ground. He had called her morbid, but she was immovable. Mrs.
Alsager's messenger let him know that he was expected to supper in Grosvenor Place, and half an hour afterwards he was seated there among complimentary people and flowers and popping corks, eating the first orderly meal he had partaken of for a week. Mrs. Alsager had carried him off in her brougham--the other people who were coming got into things of their own. He stopped her short as soon as she began to tell him how tremendously every one had been struck by the piece;he nailed her down to the question of Violet Grey. Had she spoilt the play, had she jeopardised or compromised it--had she been utterly bad, had she been good in any degree?
"Certainly the performance would have seemed better if SHE had been better," Mrs. Alsager confessed.
"And the play would have seemed better if the performance had been better," Wayworth said, gloomily, from the corner of the brougham.
"She does what she can, and she has talent, and she looked lovely.
But she doesn't SEE Nona Vincent. She doesn't see the type--she doesn't see the individual--she doesn't see the woman you meant.
She's out of it--she gives you a different person.""Oh, the woman I meant!" the young man exclaimed, looking at the London lamps as he rolled by them. "I wish to God she had known YOU!" he added, as the carriage stopped. After they had passed into the house he said to his companion:
"You see she WON'T pull me through."
"Forgive her--be kind to her!" Mrs. Alsager pleaded.
"I shall only thank her. The play may go to the dogs.""If it does--if it does," Mrs. Alsager began, with her pure eyes on him.
"Well, what if it does?"