CHAPTER VII.
Sprague was in his shirt sleeves at the typewriter when Meg tiptoed across the veranda and peeped in. He was frowning heavily, and looked a very different person from her surf-shooting pupil. She had almost decided to come again, a little later, when he looked up with a smile, and leaned back, mopping his forehead.
“You're just in time,” he said. “Come and curtain the last act for luck—I've finished.”
She leaned over his shoulder and laboriously ticked out the letters, then stood back, reviewing her work.
“Very fine!” Sprague commented, and pushed back his chair. “Visitors!” he groaned, gazing helplessly about him.
“You're not very complimentary,” said Meg.
“Visitors!” he repeated, kicking a stray boot under the bed, and tearing a dirty towel from its nail beside the washstand. “Of course,” he added, “this is sheer bluff; I'm really all of a flutter. What ought we to do?”
But Meg had crossed the room, and was lost in contemplation of the picture in the corner. The attendant was still blowing his whistle, the newsboy shouting his tragedy, and the brilliant crowd streaming down the steps from the foyer.
“I've wanted to see this all the week,” she said
“And why didn't you?” Sprague leaned across the table, watching her amusedly.
“I'm too busy now. Besides” But the sentence remained unfinished. “You remember saying you'd give a year of your life to shoot the breakers?” she added presently. “Well, I'd give five of mine to see all that.”
“Some day you will,” said Sprague.
She shook her head slowly, without answering.
“In the meantime”—he crossed to her side, and, reaching up, tore the picture from the wall—“take it, and do the next best thing—dream about it. You'll find that just as good, if not better, than the reality.”
“You think I shouldn't appreciate your London?”
“How could you after—this?” He nodded toward the open doorway, through which glimpsed the blue Pacific, reflecting the clear sunlight in a myriad points of flashing light.
“Ah, but that's because you've seen both,” said Meg. “This is new to you—that would be new to me. I want to see yellow, choking fog—streams and streams of umbrellas—wet pavements—barrel organs—and the oil lights on costers' barrows in the Mile End Road. Father used to talk about it to other men sometimes, though never to me—I heard him tell some one that it might unsettle me. But you'll tell me, won't you?”
“Some day,” said Sprague. “But now for the star boarder—what do we do?”
Meg seated herself on the table, tightly clasping the rolled-up picture.
“I don't see why we need do anything,” she said.
Sprague regarded her with a quizzical half smile before seizing on the suggestion.
“Nor I,” he agreed, dragging the stray boot defiantly into the middle of the room, and reinstating the dirty towel. “Why should we try to appear other than we are?” he rambled on, disarranging a pile of magazines on a side table. “If laughing ladies who wear clingy clothes and smoke choose to visit us uninvited, they must take us as they find us; we don't want them—we”
Simultaneously with Robert's deep-toned growl, Meg's swinging foot came into contact with Sprague's shin, a light footfall sounded on the veranda, and a moment later the door was darkened by the star boarder.
A tall, refined-looking woman, with a supercilious mouth, a surprising complexion. and a mass of suspiciously auburn hair—such was Sprague's instantaneous mental photograph of the visitor, to be developed and studied at leisure.
“May I come in?” she asked; and it was at once apparent that her voice was her charm, its musical timbre lifting even this simple request above the commonplace.
“Please do,” said Sprague, standing aside for her to enter. “I must ask you to excuse the state of the room—bachelor's quarters, you know. Won't you sit down?”
Meg seemed quite unaware that anything was expected of her, and watched the rather awkward situation from her perch on the table as if it were a scene enacted for her benefit.
While Sprague struggled manfully with the kerosene stove in the kitchen, the visitor glanced about her.
“How cozy!” she observed; but Meg saw only laughter behind her eyes, and her fingers tightened about the picture on her lap. The other turned to her with an obviously assumed embarrassment.
“Do you think he will mind?” she whispered uncertainly.
Meg glanced down at her swinging feet.
“No,” she said, “I don't think so.”
The visitor looked suitably relieved, and sat toying with her gloves. The silence was growing oppressive when Sprague returned. She leaned forward eagerly
“I don't know what you'll think of this intrusion,” she faltered prettily. “I thought—it's rather funny—I thought you would be a sort of Queenscliff prodigy in—pyjamas and"
“I'm sorry to disappoint you,” said Sprague, with a slow smile. He nodded toward the kitchen. “I can retire and put them on if you'd rather.”
The woman laughed softly, and their eyes met. In that glance each recognized the other as a kindred denizen of another world, and found mutual comfort in the fact.
She leaned back in the chair, holding her gloves behind her head in an attitude best suited to set off the slim perfection of her figure.
“Reports were conflicting,” she said. “Mrs. Adams, for instance, was positively entertaining about you until Miss Bettington here stood up for you so splendidly.”
The words were a virtual pat on the head for a good child, and Meg writhed under them.
“That was what brought me—the red rag waved at the bull, you know—I just had to see the Queenscliff playwright.” She smiled apologetically. “My stage name is Nina Holmes”
The thunderbolt was launched, and the actress, watching its devastating flight, reveled in Sprague's amaze.
“You may have heard it,” she suggested.
“Heard it!” he breathed. “I saw you three times as Portia, twice as Magda, and your photo as Madame Butterfly is on the piano yonder; but I never recognized—who would have dreamed”
Miss Nina Holmes toyed effectively with a necklace of turquoise matrix during a pregnant pause.
“I was ordered complete rest for six months, and Australia has always appealed to me,” she said. “Their women are so charming, don't you think? Then the Olympic is being redecorated; the new scheme is to be white and gold, and I'm doing away with the pit and gallery—oh, I know—but I'm just going to prove that they can be done away with.”
“Poor little Olympic!” sighed Sprague.
“You think it won't stand the test?”
“I'm quite sure it wouldn't—without you.”
Miss Nina Holmes looked pleased. What a compliment lacked in subtlety was amply atoned for in sincerity. She recognized this blunt and brown young man as a genuine worshiper.
The hissing of the kettle called Sprague to the kitchen, whence he duly emerged with the bedizened tray and tea
Meg continued to sulk unblushingly, but Sprague failed to notice it. He was entertaining Nina Holmes, and for the moment all else was subsidiary to the miraculous fact.
“Milk and two lumps,” directed the goddess; and, having no lump sugar, Sprague gauged the amount in a tea-spoon.
“And now,” he said, handing her the cup, “what do you think of our harbor, our post office, and our Manly?”
There was a laugh behind the words.
“I love them!” gushed Miss Holmes. “And the sun—the blessed sun—day after day. Isn't it a thousand pities it is all so far away? If Manly were in Europe all Europe would be in Manly.”
She looked out through the open doorway, then turned abruptly.
“You live here—alone—the year round?”
“Yes,” said Sprague.
“And you are content?”
“There's room to move and think,” he answered, smiling. “Yes, I'm content—for the present.”
“And you write plays?”
“I have written one.”
“May I see it?”
Sprague rose slowly, and, taking a loose manuscript from beside the typewriter, placed it in her hands without speaking.
In the theatrical world, and even out of it, Nina Holmes was known as the fairy godmother of the unknown playwright. She seemed to take a keen delight in producing plays that every other London manager had flung from him in disgust—and, still more surprising, succeeded in hitting on a success three times out of four.
She had received many plays in her time, some with stamps inclosed and a pleading or threatening, but always protracted, letter; others from the author in person, with profuse apologies or blatant braggadero; and as she sat with this one on her knee, while she balanced her parasol more securely against the arm of her chair, she told herself that at least the manner of its presentation was refreshing.
She had scarcely turned the first leaf, however, before a slim index finger descended on the page.
“Ah, this won't do,” she said “No soliloquies—we can't do with soliloquies” Her voice trailed away as the thread of interest carried her on, and for the next half hour she skimmed the pages without interruption.
Sprague lit his pipe without asking permission, and sat facing her, tense and motionless, his eyes riveted on her face. Sometimes she smiled, and Sprague smiled, too; at others her lips moved, or her delicately arched eyebrows contracted in a frown. Sprague's face unconsciously caught and reflected every shade of expression, for his work, the real work that had been back of all, half his life, was in the hands of the assayer.
The hollow ticking of the alarm clock and the crisp rustle of paper alone fell upon the silence as the minutes slipped by, until at last she laid the final sheet face downward on the others and looked out through the doorway.
A slow flush crept over Sprague's face; she was an infernal time speaking; was it effect, or He went out to the veranda, and knocked his pipe out on the railing.
“Well?” he suggested. The query leaped from his lips in spite of himself; his heart was actually making itself felt.
“The idea is good,” she said, turning with an abruptness that was one of her many mannerisms; “but you knew that. It would have to be slashed at a lot; but—Lorette” Again she turned to the glittering Pacific.
Sprague paced the room. The flush on his face, and suppressed excitement showed in his stride.
“Yes,” he said, “I knew the idea was good and I thought I had treated it rightly. Of course it's all in Lorette—I made her for you.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Holmes, with a slight inclination of the head and a fleeting smile. She had hoped he wouldn't say that—they all said it—but as her eyes rested surreptitiously on his frank, almost boyish profile, she felt instinctively that he spoke the truth. Yes, she distinctly liked the boy, and his Lorette was promising; but she was far too clever a woman to be enthusiastic about it. A long experience with “unknowns” had taught her to administer encouragement in sufficient doses to stimulate, not intoxicate; and although at this particular juncture—when seventeen puerile plays reposed at the bottom of her trunk, and lack of suitable material had driven her to the distracted consideration of a revival as the opening feature at the Olympic—she could have thrown her arms about his neck and wept for joy, she merely traced a pensive pattern on the bare boards of the floor with her parasol.
“You have been on the stage?” she said presently.
There was a nervous catch in Sprague's laugh.
“So-called—in America,” he said. “I was everything from comic relief to abused hero in a third-rate stock company for six months.”
“Ah!”
“I had to assume the accent, or I should have been howled off, and that's what finished me. I found it coming too easily—off as well as on—and when I met an Englishman who took me for an American I decided it had gone far enough.”
“Oh, you Englishmen!” laughed Miss Holmes. “And yet you wonder why you are disliked.”
“Not the very least,” returned Sprague cheerfully.
The actress fell to turning over the last pages of the manuscript.
Suddenly she thrust back her chair.
“The sand-blind scene!”she said. “Come—you've rehearsed it. I take Lorette—you John Faversham. This is O.P. No, you come down here.” Hurriedly she dragged two chairs into position, and almost before he realized Sprague found himself rehearsing that scene for the hundredth time. But with what a difference! The actress threw herself into the part body and soul, and although she read the words, the grip of them, the vital understanding that is part of the born artiste, was there, and Sprague saw what he had written for the first time.
And Meg watched him from her corner, and knew that she was as much to him then as one of the flies buzzing at the windowpane. They belonged—these two. They spoke the same language—a foreign tongue to her; and they laughed with the secrecy of good breeding at her and her kind. “Laugh back,” he had said; but how could she, and at what? These antics of theirs? Clearly not, for they would not notice her if she did; and of a sudden her whole semisavage little being was consumed with an unreasoning hate.
The sun had set before either of them noticed how late it was, and the actress flung herself into a chair with a gesture of mock dismay.
“Heavens!” she cried, staring at the clock, and laughed a rippling, well-trained laugh. “But it's been so good! I feel alive again.”
She sighed contentedly, and reached for her gloves.
Sprague stood before her, frankly radiant.
“You really think” he began.
“Yes,” said Miss Holmes, “I really think.”
She pulled on her gloves with a businesslike jerk.
“Although,” she added, with a quick smile, “our audience apparently does not.”
Sprague glanced hastily about him.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed. “When did she go?”