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They would have done indeed little honour to a man of tact. The next morning he received five hurried lines from Mrs. Alsager. She had suddenly been called to Torquay, to see a relation who was seriously ill; she should be detained there several days, but she had an earnest hope of being able to return in time for his first night. In any event he had her unrestricted good wishes.
The only person who paid for it was really Mrs. Alsager: she had an infallible instinct for the perfect. She paid in her own way, and if Allan Wayworth had been a wage-earning person it would have made him feel that if he didn't receive his legal dues his palm was at least occasionally conscious of a gratuity.
"Tremendously and it appears she has been fascinated by the part from the first." "Why then didn't she say so?" "Oh, because she's so funny." "She IS funny," said Mrs. Alsager, musingly; and presently she added: "She's in love with you." Wayworth stared, blushed very red, then laughed out.
Alsager, who easily understood that he had a peculiar complication of anxieties. His suspense varied in degree from hour to hour, but any relief there might have been in this was made up for by its being of several different kinds. One afternoon, as the first performance drew near, Mrs.
She had acted so often on his hints that he had formed a pleasant habit of expecting it: it made him feel so wisely responsible about giving them. But this one appeared to fall to the ground, so that he let the subject drop. Mrs. Alsager, however, went yet once more to the "Legitimate," as he found by her saying to him abruptly, on the morrow: "Oh, she'll be very good she'll be very good."
He knew them by heart, and, closing the book while she held the other end of it, he murmured them over to her they had indeed a cadence that pleased him watching, with a facetious complacency which he hoped was pardonable, the applause in her face. "Ah, who can utter such lines as THAT?" Mrs. Alsager broke out; "whom can you find to do HER?" "We'll find people to do them all!"
Were it not for this rabble, I could walk about with the greatest freedom and safety, and alone. 18th. Went to see Haj Ibrahim. Sent the letter to Mr. Alsager viâ Ghadames, the only letter I wrote from Ghat during the fifty days of my residence here. In my absence a loaf of sugar was stolen out of my apartment.
She was not Violet Grey, she was not Mrs. Alsager, she was not any woman he had seen upon earth, nor was it any masquerade of friendship or of penitence. Yet she was more familiar to him than the women he had known best, and she was ineffably beautiful and consoling. She filled the poor room with her presence, the effect of which was as soothing as some odour of incense.
"Did she wear vague, clear-coloured garments?" he asked, after a moment. Violet Grey stared, laughed, then bade him go in to supper. "YOU know how she dresses!" He was very well pleased at supper, but he was silent and a little solemn. He said he would go to see Mrs. Alsager the next day. He did so, but he was told at her door that she had returned to Torquay.
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.
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