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"I had the idea, Haswell," remarked Thayre as he plumped himself down on the leather arm of the other's chair and grinned his greeting, "that you came to this place once a year when they held the annual meeting." "And you?" countered Len in a dull voice. "I didn't regard you as an habitué either." "Right-o!" The Englishman stretched out one gaitered foot and lighted a cigarette.
"Of course," cautioned Thayre, "Mr. Burton doesn't want his name announced," and even to that restriction, limiting the value of his extemporaneous "feature," the manager reluctantly acceded. To live for music and to have no instrument with which to express one's emotions means a tortured privation of the spirit.
Thayre bent forward and spoke earnestly. "There are things a man doesn't like to have put up to him. But you aren't letting this knock you off your line, are you? You aren't going to let it bowl you over?" Again the tall man shook his head. "No, I'm quite all right," he said. "I'm going fairly straight so far." Late that night a wet snow was falling and Madison square was almost deserted.
"What do you mean?" Larry Kirk put his question blankly. "Nothing, except that you know Len or ought to. He's the present-day Othello, sulking because he can't get a dance with his wife. It's barely conceivable that he's not aching to have it rubbed in." "Can't get a dance?" repeated the empty-eyed youth perplexedly. "Why?" Thayre snorted.
Paul protested, but Thayre was a man of quick action, and a moment later the waiter had brought the head waiter, and the head waiter had gone for the manager. Such patrons as these the manager had every wish to oblige, and he was by no means unwilling to utilise such an artist as Paul Burton when the lights came on again and his patrons rose to their feet for the national anthem.
A sharp crack resounded at almost the same time and the bird fell dead. Thorburn rushed to seize the prize just as a tall young man stepped into view and picked it up. "Hello, Corney! you got my bird!" "Your burrud! Sure yours flew away thayre. I saw them settle hayer and thought I'd make sure of wan with the rifle."
"I haven't seen you since the war of the Roses. How goes it, lad?" Then, even in his heightened gaiety of mood, Thayre recognized the want and distress which had left their impress and pallor on this face, and his eyes sobered. With the other rules of the season he felt that forgetfulness of the past accorded, so he hastened to add, "You know these fellows. Fall in and hike along with us.
Those last moments in his music-room rose to his memory and they carried a penalty which slugged his heart into an intensity of shame and misery. Paul Burton, sitting there with this thin semblance of merriment around him, saw himself once again very clearly for what he was. Thayre leaned over.
He frequently felt so these days, and if he accepted he could rest quietly until the vertigo passed. "I say of course," Thayre leaned forward and explained in a lowered voice, "you go as my guest. I'm giving the party tonight."
Here also fell Captains Cookson and Meade, and Lieutenant Wood, nobly cheering on their men to the attack, while Tew had died at his post at the entrance of the shikargah. Many more were desperately wounded: Colonel Pennefather and Major Wylie; Captains Tucker, Smith, Conway; Lieutenants Plowden, Harding, Thayre, Bourdillon; Ensigns Firth, Pennefather, Bowden, Holbrow.
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