The Foolish Lovers Part 61

V

The novel was published in the same week that the tragedy was produced at the Cottenham Repertory Theatre. John had intended to be present at all the rehearsals of his play, but the manager of the theatre informed him that this was hardly necessary. It would be sufficient if he were to attend the last two and the dress rehearsal, and when John considered the state of his work on the second novel, he decided to accept the manager's advice. "After all," he said to Eleanor, "I don't know anything at all about producing plays and this chap spends his life at the job, so I can safely leave it to him!"

The complimentary copies of his novel reached him on the evening before he was to travel to Cottenham to attend his first rehearsal. He opened the parcel with trembling fingers and took out the six red-covered volumes and spread them on the table. He liked the bold black letters in which the t.i.tle of the book and his name were printed on the covers: THE ENCHANTED LOVER by JOHN MACDERMOTT. It seemed incredible to him that a book should bear his name, but there, in big, black letters on a red ground, was his name. He turned the pages, reading a sentence here and a sentence there until Eleanor, who had been out when the parcel arrived, came in.

"Look!" he said, holding one of the books towards her. She exclaimed with delight and ran forward to take the book from him. "Oh, my dear,"

she said, clasping the novel with one hand while she embraced him with the other. "I'm so proud of you, you clever creature!"

He was greatly moved by her affection, and he felt that he wanted to cry. There were very queer sensations in his throat, and he had tremendous difficulty in keeping his eyes from blinking.

"It's rather nice?" he said, touching the book.

"It's lovely," she said. She went to the table. "Are these the others?"

She drew a chair forward and sat down. "Let's send them out to-night.

This one to your mother and this one to Uncle William. I'll keep this one!" She opened the book at the dedication "To Eleanor." "Here," she said, "write your name in it!" He found a pen and ink and wrote under the dedication, "from her devoted husband," and when she saw what he had written, she hugged him and told him again that she was proud of him.

"What about the others? Are you going to send them out, too?" she asked, and he proposed to her that one should be sent to Hinde, one to Mr. Cairnduff and one to Mr. McCaughan....

"We shan't have any left, except my copy, if you do that!" she objected.

"We can easily get some more," he replied.

"I'd like to send one to that beastly cousin in Exeter just to let him see how clever you are. He hadn't the decency to send us a wedding present, the stingy miser!"

They packed up the books after John had inscribed them, and went off to the post-office together to send them off.

"Won't it be fun reading the reviews?" said John as they walked up High Street.

"I hope they'll like it, the people who review it," she answered.

"Don't let's go in just yet. Let's walk along the Spaniards' Road a little while!"

They walked up Heath Street, and when they came to the railings above The Vale of Health, they stood against them and looked towards London.

A blue haze had settled over the city and the trees were like long hanging veils through which little, yellow lights from the street-lamps shone like tiny jewels. The air was full of drowsy sounds, as if the earth were happily tired and were resting for a while before the pleasures of the night began.

"Would you like to go back to your club, Eleanor?" John said.

"Silly old silly!" she replied, pinching his arm.

"I feel as if I want to tell everybody that you've written a book and a play," she said, as they walked on. "It doesn't seem right that all these people don't know about you!"

He went to Cottenham on the next day, carrying with him an early edition of the _Evening Herald_ in which Hinde had printed a very flattering review of _The Enchanted Lover._ Eleanor had been puzzled by the promptness with which the review had appeared until John explained to her that review copies of books were sent to the newspapers a week or a fortnight before the date of publication.

"It's a very good review," she said. "I thought he didn't like the book much!"

"So did I. I hope he isn't just writing like this to please me. I don't want insincere reviews!..."

"I expect," said Eleanor, "he didn't tell you how much, he really liked it!"

"Hmmm! Perhaps that's it," John replied.

He put the paper in his pocket, and as the train drew out of Easton and started on its journey to Cottenham, he speculated on the sincerity of Hinde's review. He took the paper out of his pocket and read it again.

The review was headed, "A REMARKABLE FIRST NOVEL" and was full of phrases that seemed fulsome even to John. "We prophesy that this notable novel will have a very great success among the reading public.

It is certainly the finest story of its kind that has been _published in this country for a generation_."

"I wouldn't have said that about it myself," John reflected. "Of course, I'd like to think it's true, but!... I hope this isn't just logrolling!" He remembered how fiercely Hinde had described the back-scratching, high-minded poets who boomed each other in their papers.

"I don't want to get praise that way," he thought, putting the paper back into his pocket. "I'll order half-a-dozen copies of the _Herald_ when I get back from Cottenham. My Uncle William will be glad of a copy, and so will Mr. Cairnduff and the minister!..."

VI

The Cottenham Repertory Theatre was a dingy, ill-built house in a back street in Cottenham. It had been a music-hall of a low cla.s.s until the earnest playgoers of Cottenham, extremely anxious about the condition of the drama, formed themselves into a society to improve the theatre.

By dint of agitation and much hard work, they contrived to get enough money together to take the music-hall over from its owner who was unable to compete against the syndicate halls and was steadily drinking himself to death in consequence, and turned it into a repertory theatre. Their success had been moderate, for they united to their good intentions a habit of denunciation of all plays that were not "repertory" plays which had the effect partly of irritating the common playgoer and partly of frightening him. All the plays that were labelled "repertory" plays were praised by these earnest students of the drama without any sort of discrimination, and when, as often happened, a very poor play was produced at the Repertory Theatre, any common playgoer who saw it and was bored by it, went away in the belief that he was not educated up to the standard of such austere work and resolved that he would seek his entertainment elsewhere in future. It was to this theatre that John went on the day after his arrival in Cottenham. The town itself depressed him immeasurably. It was the most shapeless, nondescript, undignified town he had ever seen, and yet it was one of the richest places in England. There was no seemliness in its main streets; little huckstering shops hustled larger and more pretentious shops, but all of them had an air of vivacious vulgarity.

They had not been given the look of sobriety which age gives even to ugly streets in ugly towns. They seemed to be striving against each other in a compet.i.tion to decide which was the commonest and shoddiest shop in the city. It seemed to John that all these Cottenham shops dropped their aitches!... The clouds were grey when he arrived in Cottenham, dirty-grey and very cheerless; they were still dirty-grey when he went to the theatre, and rain fell before he reached it; and the clouds remained in that dismal state until he quitted Cottenham after the first performance of _Milchu and St. Patrick: A Tragedy_. It seemed to John that they would never be otherwise than dirty-grey, that the streets would always be wet and the shops always clamantly vulgar.

"I wouldn't live in this place for the wide world," he said, as he turned into the stage-door of the Repertory Theatre.

He was directed to the manager's office by the doorkeeper. The Manager was on the stage, so the girl secretary informed him, and if Mr.

MacDermott would kindly follow her she would take him there at once. He had never seen the stage side of the proscenium before, and although the place was dark and he stumbled over properties, he felt enormously interested in what he saw.

"Is that the scenery?" he said to the secretary as they pa.s.sed some tawdry looking flats lying against the walls of the scene-dock.

"Yes," she answered. "It looks awful in the daylight, doesn't it? But when the footlights are on and the limes are lit, you'd be surprised to see how fine it looks. They say that common materials look better in limelight than good things do. Funny, isn't it?"

She led him on to the stage and brought him to the manager.

"This is Mr. MacDermott," she said to a tall, lean, worried man who was standing immediately in front of the footlights, directing the rehearsal which was then beginning.

"Oh, ah, yes!" said the manager, and then he turned to John. "I'm Gidney," he said.

John murmured a politeness.

"Now, let me introduce you to people!" He turned to the players, all of whom had that appearance of depression which actors habitually wear in daylight, as if they felt naked and ashamed without their grease-paint.

"This is the author of the play," he exclaimed to them. "Mr.

MacDermott!" He led John to each of the players, naming them as he did so, and each of them murmured that he or she was delighted to have the pleasure!...

"I think if you were to sit in the front row of the stalls, Mr.

MacDermott!" said Gidney, "while the rehearsal proceeds, that would be best. You can tell me at the end of each act what alterations or suggestions you wish to propose!"

"Very good," said John, feeling his spirits running rapidly into his boots. What were these cheerless people going to do with the play over which he had laboured and sweated for weeks and weeks?...

They went through their parts with a lifeless facility that turned his tragedy, he imagined, into a neat piece of machinery and left it without any glow of emotion whatever. Now and then the ease with which they recited their words was interrupted by forgetfulness and the player, whose memory had failed him, would snap his fingers and call to the prompter, "What is it?" or "Give me that line, will you?"

"How do you think it's going?" said the manager to John at the end of the first act.

"Well, I don't know," he answered with a nervous laugh. "They aren't putting much enthusiasm into it, are they?"

"Ah, but this is only a rehearsal. Wait till you see the dress rehearsal!"