CHAPTER LIV.—ON THE DECAY OF THE PAT AS A POWER.

IT was a few days after Edmund Airey had made his revelation—if it was a revelation—to Helen Craven, that Harold received a visitor in the person of Archie Brown. The second week in January had now come. The season of German Opera was over, and Parliament was about to assemble; but neither of these matters was engrossing the attention of Archie. That he was in a state of excitement anyone could see, and before he had even asked after Harold’s health, he cried, “I’ve fired out the lot of them, Harry; that’s the sort of new potatoes I am.”

“The lot of what?” asked Harold.

“Don’t you know? Why, the lot of Legitimists,” said Archie.

“The Legitimists? My dear Archie, you don’t surely expect me to believe that you possess sufficient political power to influence the fortunes of a French dynasty.”

“French dynasty be grilled. I said the Legitimists—the actors, the carpenters, the gasmen, the firemen, the check-takers, Shakespeare, and Mrs. Mowbray of the Legitimate Theatre. I’ve fired out the lot of them, and be hanged to them!”

“Oh, I see; you’ve fired out Shakespeare?”

“He’s eternally fired out, so far as I’m concerned. Why should I end my days in a workhouse because a chap wrote plays a couple of hundred years ago—may be more?”

“Why, indeed? And so you fired him out?”

“I’ve made things hum at the Legitimate this morning”—Archie had once spent three months in the United States—“and now I’ve made the lot of them git. I’ve made W. S. git.”

“And Mrs. Mowbray?”

“She gits too.”

“She’ll do it gracefully. Archie, my man, you’re not wanting in courage.”

“What courage was there needed for that?”—Archie had picked up a quill pen and was trying, but with indifferent success, to balance it on the toe of his boot, as he leant back in a chair. “What courage is needed to tell a chap that’s got hold of your watch chain that the time has come for him to drop it? Great Godfrey! wasn’t I the master of the lot of them? Do you fancy that the manager was my master? Do you fancy that Mrs. Mowbray was my—I mean, do you think that I’m quite an ass?”

“Well, no,” said Harold—“not quite.”

“Do you suppose that my good old dad had any Scruples about firing out a crowd of navvies when he found that they didn’t pay? Not he. And do you suppose that I haven’t inherited some of his good qualities?”

“And when does the Legitimate close its doors?”

“This day week. Those doors have been open too long already. Seventy-five pounds for the Widow’s champagne for the Christmas week—think of that, Harry. Mrs. Mowbray’s friends drink nothing but Clicquot. She expects me to pay for her entertainments, and calls it Shakespeare. If you grabbed a chap picking your pocket, and he explained to the tarty chips at Bow Street that his initials were W. S. would he get off? Don’t you believe it, Harry.”

“Nothing shall induce me.”

“The manager’s only claim to have earned his salary is that he has been at every theatre in London, and has so got the biggest list of people to send orders to, so as to fill the house nightly. It seems that the most valuable manager is the one who has the longest list of people who will accept orders. That’s theatrical enterprise nowadays. They say it’s the bicycle that has brought it about.”

“Anyhow you’ve quarrelled with Mrs. Mowbray? Give me your hand; Archie. You’re a man.”

“Quarrelled with Mrs. Mowbray? It was about time. She went to pat my head again to-day, when there was a buzz in the manager’s office. She didn’t pat my head, Harry—the day is past for pats, and so I told her. The day is past when she could butter me with her pats. She gave me a look when I said that—if she could give such looks on the stage she’d crowd the house—and then she cried, ‘Nothing on earth shall induce me ever to speak to you again.’ ‘I ask nothing better,’ said I. After that she skipped. I promised Norah that I’d do it, and I have done it.”

“You promised whom?”

“Norah. Great Godfrey! you don’t mean to say that you haven’t heard that Norah Innisfail and I are to be married?”

“Norah—Innisfail—and—you—you?”

Harold lay back in his chair and laughed. The idea of the straightlaced Miss Innisfail marrying Archie Brown seemed very comical to him.

“What are you laughing about?” said Archie. “You shouldn’t laugh, considering that it was you that brought it about.”

“I? I wish that I had no more to reproach myself with; but I can’t for the life of me see how—”

“Didn’t you get Mrs. Lampson to invite me to Abbeylands, and didn’t I meet Norah there, bless her! At first, do you know, I fancied that I was getting fond of her mother?”

“Oh, yes; I can understand that,” said Harold, who was fully acquainted with the systems which Lady Innisfail worked with such success.

“But, bless your heart! it was all motherly kindness on Lady Innisfail’s part—so she explained when—ah—later on. Then I went with her to Lord Innisfail’s place at Netherford and—well, there’s no explaining these things. Norah is the girl for me! I’ve felt a better man for knowing her, Harry. It’s not every girl that a chap can say that of—mostly the other way. Lord Innisfail heard something about the Legitimate business, and he said that it was about time I gave it up; I agreed with him, and I’ve given it up.”

“Archie,” said Harold, “you’ve done a good morning’s work. I was going to advise you never to see Mrs. Mowbray again—never to grant her an interview—she’s an edged tool—but after what you’ve done, I feel that it would be a great piece of presumption on my part to offer you any advice.”

“Do you know what it is?” said Archie, in a low and very confidential voice: “I’m not quite so sure of her character as I used to be. I know you always stood up for her.”

“I still believe that she never had more than one lover at a time,” said Harold.

“Was that seventy-five pound’s worth of the Widow swallowed by one lover in a week?” asked Archie. “Oh, I’m sick of the whole concern. Don’t you mention Shakespeare to me again.”

“I won’t,” said Harold. “But it strikes me that Shakespeare is like Madame Roland’s Liberty.”

“Whose Liberty?”

“Madame Roland’s.”

“Oh, she’s a dressmaker of Bond Street, I suppose. They’re all Madames there. I dare say I’ve got a bill from her to pay with the rest of them. Mrs. Mowbray has dealt with them all. Now I’m off. I thought I’d drop in and tell you all that happened, as you’re accountable for my meeting Norah.”

“You will give her my best regards and warmest congratulations,” said Harold. “Accept the same yourself.”

“You had a good time at their Irish place yourself, hadn’t you?” said Archie. “How was it that you didn’t fall in love with Norah when you were there? That’s what has puzzled me. How is it that every tarty chip didn’t want to marry her? Oh, I forgot that you—well, wasn’t there a girl with lovely eyes in Ireland?”

“You have heard of Irish girls and their eyes,” said Harold.

“She had wonderful gray eyes,” said Archie. Harold became grave. “Oh, yes, Norah has a pair of eyes too, and she keeps them wide open. She told me a good deal about their party in Ireland. She took it for granted that you—”

“Archie,” said Harold, “like a good chap don’t you ever talk about that to me again.”

“All right, I’ll not,” said Archie. “Only, you see, I thought that you wouldn’t mind now, as everyone says that she’s going to marry Airey, the M.P. for some place or other. I knew that you’d be glad to hear that I’d fired out the Legitimate.”

“So I am—very glad.”

Archie was off, having abandoned as futile his well-meant attempts to balance the quill on the toe first of one boot, then of the other.

He was off, and Harold was standing at the window, watching him gathering up his reins and sending his horses at a pretty fair pace into the square.

It had fallen—the blow had fallen. She was going to marry Edmund Airey.

Could he blame her?

He felt that he had treated her with a baseness that deserved the severest punishment—such punishment as was now in her power to inflict. She had trusted him with all her heart—all her soul. She had given herself up to him freely, and he had made her the victim of a fraud. That was how he had repaid her for her trustfulness.

He did not stir from the window for hours. He thought of her without any bitterness—all his bitterness was divided between the thoughts of his own cruelty and the thoughts of Edmund Airey’s cleverness. He did not know which was the more contemptible; but the conclusion to which he came, after devoting some time to the consideration of the question of the relative contemptibility of the two, was that, on the whole, Edmund Airey’s cleverness was the more abhorrent.

But Archie Brown, after leaving St. James’s, drove with his customary rapidity to Connaught Square, to tell of his achievement to Norah.

Miss Innisfail, while fully recognizing the personal obligations of Archie to the Shakesperian drama, had agreed with her father that this devotion should not be an absorbing one. She had had a hint or two that it absorbed a good deal of money, and though she had been assured by Archie that no one could say a word against Mrs. Mowbray’s character, yet, like Harold—perhaps even better than Harold—she knew that Mrs. Mowbray was an extremely well-dressed woman. She listened with interest to Archie’s account of how he had accomplished that process of “firing out” in regard to the Legitimate artists; and when he had told her all, she could not help wondering if Mrs. Mowbray would be quite as well dressed in the future as she had been in the past.

Archie then went on to tell her how he had called upon Harold, and how Harold had congratulated him.

“You didn’t forget to tell him that people are saying that Mr. Airey is going to marry Miss Avon?” said Norah.

“Have I ever forgotten to carry out one of your commissions?” he asked.

“Good gracious! You didn’t suggest that you were commissioned by me to tell him that?”

“Not likely. That’s not the sort of new potatoes I am. I was on the cautious side, and I didn’t even mention the name of the girl.” He did not think it necessary to say that the reason for his adoption of this prudent course was that he had forgotten the name of the girl. “No, but when I told him that Airey was going to marry her, he gave me a look.”

“A look? What sort of a look?”

“I don’t know. The sort of a look a chap would give to a surgeon who had just snipped off his leg. Poor old Harry looked a bit cut up. Then he turned to me and said as gravely as a parson—a bit graver than some parsons—that he’d feel obliged to me if I’d never mention her name again.”

“But you hadn’t mentioned her name, you said.”

“Neither I had. He didn’t mention it either. I can only give you an idea of what he said, I won’t take my oath about the exact words. But I’ll take my oath that he was more knocked down than any chap I ever came across.”

“I knew it,” said Norah. “He’s in love with her still. Mamma says he’s not; but I know perfectly well that he is. She doesn’t care a scrap for Mr. Airey.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know it.”

“Oh.”