"Theaters?"

"Of course," John a.s.sented. "It's no good being narrow about theaters, Stephen. You read books readily enough, and theaters are only living books, after all. There is no real difference."

"There is a difference in plays, though, as there is a difference in books," Stephen reminded him. "What about the play Miss Maurel is acting in now? She's a man's mistress in it, isn't she, and glories in it?"

John, who had been walking about the room, came and sat down opposite to his brother. He leaned a little forward.

"Stephen," he confessed, "I loathed that play the first night I saw it.

I sha'n't forget how miserable I was. Louise was so wonderful that I could see how she swayed all that audience just by lifting or dropping her voice; but the story was a horror to me. The next day--well, she talked to me. She was very kind and very considerate. She explained many things. I try my best, now, to look at the matter from her point of view."

Stephen's eyes were filled for a moment with silent scorn. Then he knocked out the ashes from his pipe.

"You're content, then, to let the woman you want to make your wife show herself on the stage and play the wanton for folks to grin at?" he asked.

John rose once more to his feet.

"Look here, Stephen," he begged, a little wistfully, "it isn't any use talking like that, is it? If you have come here with evil things in your mind about the woman I love, we had better shake hands and part quickly. She'll be my wife some day, or I shall count my life a failure, and I don't want to feel that words have pa.s.sed between us--"

"I'll say no more, John," Stephen interrupted. "I was hoping, when I came, that there might be a chance of seeing you back home again soon.

It's going to be an early spring. There was June sunshine yesterday. It lay about the hillsides all day and brought the tender greens out of the earth. It opened the crocuses, waxy yellow and white, all up the garden border. The hedgerows down in the valley smelled of primrose and violets. Art and pictures! I never had such schooling as you, John, but there was old Dr. Benson at Clowmarsh--I always remember what he said one day, just before I left. I'd been reading Ruskin, and I asked him what art was and what it meant. 'My boy,' he answered, 'art simply represents man's pa.s.sionate desire to drag the truth out of life in half a dozen different ways. G.o.d does it for you in the country!' They called him an ignorant man, old Benson, for a schoolmaster, but when I'd struggled through what I could of Ruskin, I came to the conclusion that he and I were something of the same mind."

"It's good to hear you talk like that, Stephen," John said earnestly.

"You're making me homesick, but what's the sense of it? For good or for evil, I am here to wrestle with things for a bit."

"It's no easy matter for me to open out the things that are in my heart," Stephen answered. "I am one of the old-fashioned Strangeweys.

What I feel is pretty well locked up inside. The last time you and I met perhaps I spoke too much; so here I am!"

"It's fine of you," John declared. "I remember nothing of that day. We will look at things squarely together, even where we differ. I'm--"

He broke off in the middle of his sentence. The door had been suddenly opened, and Sophy Gerard made a somewhat impetuous entrance.

"I'm absolutely sick of ringing, John," she exclaimed. "Oh, I beg your pardon! I hadn't the least idea you had any one with you."

She stood still in surprise, a little apologetic smile upon her lips.

John hastened forward and welcomed her.

"It's all right, Sophy," he declared. "Let me introduce my brother, may I? My brother Stephen--Miss Sophy Gerard."

Stephen rose slowly from his place, laid down his pipe, and bowed stiffly to Sophy. She held out her hand, however, and smiled up at him delightfully.

"How nice of you to come and see your poor, lonely brother!" she said.

"We have done our best to spoil him, but I am afraid he is very homesick sometimes. I hope you've come to stay a long time and to learn all about London, as John is doing. If you are half as nice as he is, we'll give you such a good time!"

From his great height, Stephen looked down upon the girl's upturned face a little austerely. She chattered away, entirely unabashed.

"I do hope you're not shocked at my bursting in upon your brother like this! We really are great pals, and I live only just across the way. We are much less formal up here, you know, than you are in the country.

John, I've brought you a message from Louise."

"About to-night?"

She nodded.

"Louise is most frightfully sorry," she explained, "but she has to go down to Streatham to open a bazaar, and she can't possibly be back in time to dine before the theater. Can you guess what she dared to suggest?"

"I think I can," John replied, smiling.

"Say you will, there's a dear," she begged. "I am not playing to-night.

May Enser is going on in my place. We arranged it a week ago. I had two fines to pay on Sat.u.r.day, and I haven't had a decent meal this week. But I had forgotten," she broke off, with a sudden note of disappointment in her tone. "There's your brother. I mustn't take you away from him."

"We'll all have dinner together," John suggested. "You'll come, of course, Stephen?"

Stephen shook his head.

"Thank you," he said, "I am due at my hotel. I'm going back to c.u.mberland to-morrow morning, and my errand is already done."

"You will do nothing of the sort!" John declared.

"Please be amiable," Sophy begged. "If you won't come with us, I shall simply run away and leave you with John. You needn't look at your clothes," she went on. "We can go to a grill-room. John sha'n't dress, either. I want you to tell me all about c.u.mberland, where this brother of yours lives. He doesn't tell us half enough!"

John pa.s.sed his arm through his brother's and led him away.

"Come and have a wash, old chap," he said.

They dined together at Luigi's, a curiously a.s.sorted trio--Sophy, between the two men, supplying a distinctly alien note. She was always gay, always amusing, but although she addressed most of her remarks to Stephen, he never once unbent. He ate and drank simply, seldom speaking of himself or his plans, and firmly negativing all their suggestions for the remainder of the evening. Occasionally he glanced at the clock.

John became conscious of a certain feeling of curiosity, which in a sense Sophy shared.

"Your brother seems to me like a man with a purpose," she said, as they stood in the entrance-hall on their way out of the restaurant. "Like a prophet with a mission, perhaps I should say."

John nodded. In the little pa.s.sage where they stood, he and Stephen seemed to dwarf the pa.s.sers-by. The men, in their evening clothes and pallid faces, seemed suddenly insignificant, and the women like dolls.

"For the last time, Stephen," John said, "won't you come to a music-hall with us?"

"I have made my plans for the evening, thank you," Stephen replied, holding out his hand. "Good night!"

He left them standing there and walked off down the Strand. John, looking after him, frowned. He was conscious of a certain foreboding.

XXVI

"I suppose," Sophy sighed, as they waited for a taxicab, "we shall spend the remainder of the evening in the usual fashion!"

"Do you mind?" John asked.

"No," she a.s.sented resignedly. "That play will end by making a driveling idiot of me. Only think for yourself! At first we had to rehea.r.s.e an extra month to please M. Graillot. I never had more than a dozen lines to say, even before my part was practically cut out, but I had to be there every time. Now it has been running for I don't know how many nights, I have played in it half the time, and if your highness ever vouchsafes me a few hours in the evening, you turn to me about nine o'clock with just the same plaintive expression, and murmur something about going on to the theater!"

"We'll do something else to-night," John proposed heroically. "I really had no idea that you were so fed up with it."