THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 MRS. VIRGINIA B. SPORER 
 
The Works of Leonard Merrick 
 
 THE POSITION OF 
 PEGGY HARPER 
 
The Works of 
 
 LEONARD MERR10K 
 
 CONRAD IN QUEST OF HIS YOUTH. With 
 
 an Introduction by SIB J. M. BARBIE. 
 WHEN LOVE FLIES OUT O' THE WINDOW. 
 
 With an Introduction by SIB WILLIAM ROBEHT- 
 
 BON NICOLL. 
 
 THE QUAINT COMPANIONS. With an Intro- 
 duction by H. G. WELLS. 
 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER. With 
 
 an Introduction by SIB ABTHUR PINEBO. 
 THE MAN WHO UNDERSTOOD WOMEN and 
 
 other Stories. With an Introduction by W. J. 
 
 LOCKE. 
 THE WORLDLINGS. With an Introduction by 
 
 NEIL MUNBO. 
 THE ACTOR-MANAGER. With an Introduction 
 
 by W. D. Ho WELLS. 
 CYNTHIA. With an Introduction by MAURICM 
 
 HEWLETT. 
 ONE MAN'S VIEW. With an Introduction by 
 
 GRANVILLE BABKEB. 
 THE MAN WHO WAS GOOD. With an Intro- 
 
 duction by J. K. PBOTHERO. 
 A CHAIR ON THE BOULEVARD. With an 
 
 Introduction by A. NEIL LYONS. 
 THE HOUSE OF LYNCH. With an Introduo- 
 
 tion by G. K. CHESTEBTON. 
 WHILE PARIS LAUGHED: BEIWQ PEAKBB AND 
 
 PASSIONS OF THE POET TBICOTBIN. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
THE POSITION OF 
 PEGGY HARPER 
 
 
 By LEONARD M E R R I C K 
 
 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1912, 
 BY MITCHELL KENNERLY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1919, 
 BY B. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 The First American Definitive Edition, with Introduction by 
 
 Arthur Pinero, limited to 1550 copies 
 
 (of which only 1500 were for sale) 
 
 Published July 26th, 1919 
 Second American Edition, August, 1919 
 .Third " " August, 1919 
 
 Fourth " " October, 1919 
 
 Printed In the 7 United States of America 
 
INTRODUCTION CoO. 2- 
 
 IT is, I believe, an open secret that Mr. Mer- 
 rick was once upon a time "on the stage," and 
 the reason I have been asked to write a short 
 introduction to The Position of Peggy Harper 
 is, I suppose, that I also was an actor in my early 
 days. I also have been a client of Mr. Albe- 
 marle, the theatrical agent, and have climbed 
 too that stone staircase leading to Mr. Potter's 
 waiting-room described in another theatrical 
 story by Mr. Merrick, When Love Flies out o* 
 the Window. And whether you call Albemarle 
 "Potter" or Potter "Albemarle," no man, or 
 woman, can hate him more cordially in the recol- 
 lection than I do not even Mr. Merrick. It is 
 true that my Albemarle, or Potter, is dead and 
 gone it is a later Albemarle and a later Potter 
 that Mr. Merrick has drawn for us and that, 
 according to a merciful rule, I ought to forgive 
 him. But I don't, any more than I can forget 
 him. He sits before me at this moment with his 
 "silk hat on his head, and a long cigar in his 
 mouth, each at an angle of forty-five degrees," 
 a most shocking bully. I can see myself stand- 
 
 2041664 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing in his awful presence, as Christopher Tatham 
 stood, and can hear myself asking him, perhaps 
 for the third time within a month, if he had 
 "anything for me"; and his contemptuous reply, 
 "Look heah! Would yer like yer money back?" 
 my money being the "booking fee" of five 
 shillings cuts into me now, as I recall it, almost 
 as sharply as if I had only just felt the lick of 
 the whip. Even the knowledge that a few years 
 afterwards I was able to stalk into the ruffian's 
 private office and patronize him loftily fails to 
 cool the sting. 
 
 But on the doorstep of Albemarle's, or Pot- 
 ter's, dramatic agency, Mr. Merrick and I, so 
 far as our theatrical experiences go, seem to part 
 company. Chance guided me into fairly smooth 
 paths; Mr. Merrick, fortunately, was to tread 
 rougher ones. I say fortunately, because it is 
 to Mr. Merrick's obviously first-hand acquaint- 
 ance with the lower grade theatre that we owe 
 at least two quite remarkable studies of shady 
 theatrical life and character the novel to which 
 these few words are prefixed, and the before- 
 mentioned When Love Flies out o' the Window. 
 Though my experiences may have differed from 
 Mr. Merrick's, I have seen enough of the seamy 
 side of the stage to enable me to youch for the 
 truth of these two works. 
 
INTRODUCTION yii 
 
 The story of Peggy Harper, as the reader will 
 soon find, is a simple affair. I don't propose to 
 retell it here. As a matter of fact, any ordinarily 
 equipped story-teller desiring to treat of the 
 theatre could, without a great expenditure of 
 mental effort, conceive the story of Peggy Har- 
 per. But, having conceived it, nobody, I am 
 convinced, could unfold it in such a consum- 
 mately natural, unforced way as Mr. Merrick 
 unfolds it, nor people it as he peoples it. Chris- 
 topher, the wretched Galbraith, poor Elsie Lane, 
 Armytage the bogus-manager, Naomi Knight, 
 Logan Ross, Mrs. Harper, Peggy herself, are 
 a wonderful little group etched with unerring 
 fidelity and power of suggestion. Galbraith I 
 have met too often. He is to be found was to 
 be found, at any rate in the higher class theatre 
 as well as in the lower. One of my Galbraiths, 
 a man of education and a good fellow, who once 
 held a prominent position in the principal Lon- 
 don theatres, is finishing his days in a provincial 
 workhouse. Mr. Merrick foreshadows a similar 
 fate for his Galbraith. Naomi, in male form, 
 was a close friend of mine. Everybody in stage- 
 land is familiar with the actor who, terribly in 
 earnest, has settled ideas as to exactly how a part 
 should be played, and who, whether his ideas are 
 sound or unsound, is utterly unable to embody 
 
>!ii INTRODUCTION 
 
 them; but it was left to Mr. Merrick to give us, 
 in Naomi Knight, a picture of this pathetic mix- 
 ture of enthusiasm and incapacity. Logan Ross 
 is not the equal of the amazing Spencer Parlett 
 in When Love Flies out o j the Window the 
 latter is one of Mr. Merrick's really big things 
 but Ross is a fine portrait nevertheless. I am 
 not quite so sure about Theodosia Moore, but I 
 have no doubt whatever as to the ineffably vul- 
 gar, hen-brained Peggy. She is another of Mr. 
 Merrick's masterpieces. The scene of her final 
 dismissal of Christopher, short as it is, and the 
 incidents immediately leading up to it, are among 
 the perfect bits of verisimilitude in fiction. The 
 young lady's last speech to quote it would spoil 
 the thrill is an ineradicable memory. 
 
 Short as it is. There you have the very spirit 
 of Mr. Merrick's literary gift and method 
 conciseness and ease. He will reveal in a seem- 
 ingly careless half -sentence what another writer 
 will take a page over, or will heavily underscore. 
 Not for Mr. Merrick is the laboured analysis 
 analysis run mad in some cases of many of our 
 modern novelists, nor the loud devices of the de- 
 liberate sensationalist. A little earlier I have 
 used the expression "etched," and this expression 
 indicates, in my opinion, the most characteristic 
 feature, and the high-water mark, of Merrick's 
 
INTRODUCTION is 
 
 genius. He does with his pen what a fine etcKer 
 does with his needle. Working in a far different 
 medium, he gives us the special qualities of the 
 etched line its animation, its spontaneousness, 
 its rare economy. "Every stroke he makes tells 
 strongly against him if it be bad," says Seymour 
 Haden of the etcher, "or proves him to be a 
 master if it be good. In no branch of art does a 
 touch go for so much. The necessity for a rigid 
 selection is therefore constantly present to his 
 mind. If one stroke in the right place tell more 
 for him than ten in the wrong, it would seem to 
 follow that that single stroke is a more learned 
 stroke than the scores of ten by which he would 
 have arrived at his end." Adapt these terms to 
 the art of the novel-writer, and Mr. Merrick 
 emerges from the test triumphantly. Take as an 
 example of his etching method and I select it 
 almost at haphazard his description, in Peggy 
 Harper., of the personal appearance of Army- 
 tage the bogus-manager: 
 
 "The advertiser who, it transpired, called 
 himself Armytage was evidently attired for 
 the occasion. He wore a frock-coat, in combina- 
 tion with a summer waistcoat, much crumpled, 
 and the trousers of a tweed suit. A garnet pin 
 ornamented the wrong portion of a made-up tie." 
 
 Now, this is neither Impressionism nor Real- 
 
x INTRODUCTION 
 
 ism in the sense that these words are bandied 
 about. It is a plain, straightforward, apparently 
 effortless account of a man's apparel, his coat, 
 waistcoat, trousers, necktie. It doesn't cry out 
 in the voice of the Impressionist, "Look! See 
 how clever I am, how nothing escapes me; how 
 I observe, in a flash, what is hidden from the 
 common vision!", nor does it, with the larger lib- 
 erality of the Realist, afford us a glimpse of 
 Mr. Armytage's soiled undervest. To carry the 
 contrast still further, it has nothing of the snap- 
 shot on the one hand, nor the scalpel and the dis- 
 secting-table on the other. I repeat, it is the 
 most modest of statements; but every stroke, as 
 in a skilful etching, being "in the right place," 
 the imagination is stimulated to evolve from it 
 the whole history of the miserable Armytage. 
 Struggle, defeat, poverty, the fight for life, the 
 pitiful roguery all is suggested, as it were, upon 
 the bitten plate. The trousers of a tweed suit! 
 There is the "learned stroke." The "garnet pin 
 ornamenting the wrong portion of a made-up 
 tie" is eloquent enough, but the trousers of a 
 tweed suit in conjunction with the frock-coat 
 out of date and shiny at its elbows, as we are 
 allowed to suspect is the supreme touch. 
 
 Perhaps it is the spectacle of the sombre figure 
 of Tragedy tugging at Comedy's sleeve, and 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 holding his sinister face close to hers, so con- 
 stantly recurring in Mr. Merrick's work even in 
 its lightest moments, that has cost this author 
 many thousands of readers. What Forster says 
 of Dickens, in a criticism of Bleak House, may 
 with truth be said of Mr. Merrick, that he shares 
 with the Frenchman the gift of being serious 
 gaily and charmingly. But the gaiety of Mer- 
 rick is never quite so buoyant, so wholehearted, 
 as the gaiety of Dickens; the note of reservation 
 is always present; a shadow, if only a flicker, is 
 seldom absent from the printed page. Which is 
 slightly disturbing to that class of reader who, 
 in opposition to nature, likes his sunshine un- 
 mottled. When I first met Mr. Merrick I told 
 him, appositely, a story. Here it is. A young 
 actor, whom I knew in later years and from 
 whom I heard the tale, was making his first ap- 
 pearance in London at an East End theatre, in 
 a "juvenile" part in a melodrama. He had fin- 
 ished dressing, and was sitting waiting for the 
 call-boy to shout "beginners," when an old stager 
 dressing at the same bench, after surveying him 
 steadily, said, "Laddie, where's your wig?" 
 "Wig?" inquired my friend. "Yes," returned 
 the old man, "you've forgotten your wig." 
 "Oh," said the novice, "I'm not wearing a wig. 
 You see, I'm playing a young fellow of my own 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 age. Might be myself, in fact. I don't need a 
 wig." "Ah! H'm!" replied the old man gravely, 
 "you're wrong, laddie ; believe me, you're wrong. 
 They look for a wig in this theatre" 
 
 Alas! in the theatre of books, as well as in 
 the theatre of plays, a vast number of people are 
 still looking for wigs. And Mr. Merrick's char- 
 acters wear none, being the creatures not only 
 of keen observation but of a strict literary integ- 
 rity. The issue of a Collected Edition of the 
 works of Leonard Merrick is therefore a matter 
 for special rejoicing; for, with it, this most ac- 
 complished and unobtrusive of narrators may be 
 said to have come into his own. 
 
 ARTHUR PINEEO. 
 
THE POSITION OF 
 PEGGY HARPER 
 
BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A GENTLEMAN who had been called to the Bar, 
 expecting to make a great name and a large 
 fortune, died obscurely, leaving the sum of 57 
 3s. 6d. f a widow, and a son. His other surviving 
 relative was a married sister. This lady said to 
 her husband, who was lucratively associated with 
 hops, "You had better find a berth for Chris- 
 topher in the office, George." 
 
 Christopher Tatham had come down abruptly 
 from Oxford, where George Spaulding and his 
 wife, not unreasonably, considered that it was 
 preposterous to have sent him, and had seemed 
 to view his proposed introduction to the office 
 in a proper light. Then, in a burst of confidence 
 one day, he avowed to his aunt that, from his 
 childhood, he had been ambitious to go on the 
 stage. And he did not go into the office. "Uncle 
 George" had an open mind, and sons of his own 
 to share the profits of hops, and he said, "Well, 
 if he has any talent that way, the best thing he 
 
 1 
 
2 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 can do is to become an actor there's no future 
 for him in the business, you know. Tell him to 
 come and stay with us while he looks round." 
 
 The process of looking round, as conducted 
 by a novice, led to nothing but fruitless inter- 
 views with needy persons who advertised for 
 "Amateurs of ability" and sought simpletons of 
 means, but Mr. Spaulding occasionally met foot- 
 light favourites at Masonic dinners, and gener- 
 ously he proceeded to make himself a nuisance 
 to them. "A young protege of mine, who is an 
 aspirant for histrionic honours" figured in his 
 discourse so often that several theatrical celebri- 
 ties grew profane when they found they were to 
 sit next to him. His persistence at last secured 
 a chance for Tatham to make his debut at a 
 fashionable theatre as an "extra gentleman" : 
 in which capacity he received a guinea a week, 
 and his principal duty was to simulate enjoy- 
 ment of an imitation ice-cream composed of pink 
 cotton-wool. "Extra gentlemen" are super- 
 numeraries of some refinement, who possess 
 dress-clothes of their own and don't look like 
 waiters when they are meant to represent Lady 
 Alethea's guests. The widow, meanwhile, had 
 been living in a boarding-house on the balance 
 of the 57 3s. 6d. Her son took fifteen shillings 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 3 
 
 of his salary to her every Sunday and continued 
 to be sheltered by the Spauldings. 
 
 The career of the comedy was discomfitingly 
 brief, and the one that followed it extended no 
 hospitality to "guests." But after an anxious 
 interval, the aspirant obtained an opportunity 
 thanks to Masonic dinners again to play 
 small parts, at small terms, in a stock company 
 in the East End. His first appearance there 
 was made as "Ginger Bill" in The Romany Rye, 
 and when he put on the corduroys, and the car- 
 roty wig that didn't fit him, the evil heat of the 
 dressing-room and the smell of the other actors' 
 fried fish and chips intensified the sickness of his 
 terror. 
 
 However, his performance of a hooligan gave 
 satisfaction, though he had amused the East End 
 company at rehearsal by having to inquire the 
 meaning of the word "barney" in his part. The 
 audience paid him the compliment of calling him 
 before the curtain in the role of "Ginger Bill." 
 They approved him moderately in various roles 
 that he sustained during the season. And then, 
 one red-letter night, a provincial actress, who 
 had come to the theatre to star in a sensational 
 drama of her own composition, offered him an 
 engagement to tour in it. 
 
 It was a testimonial. There was jealousy. 
 
$ THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 *' She'd have liked to get me" declared a fa- 
 vourite of Whitechapel, devouring his pen'orth 
 of fried fish, "but she said, 'I know what it is 
 you London actors won't leave town!' ' In the 
 new engagement, the weekly salary was a couple 
 of pounds, and the young man contrived to remit 
 a sovereign each week now to his mother. It 
 was progress. It was felt that "Christopher was 
 beginning to get on." Only, when the tour ter- 
 minated, he was, naturally, again without money 
 to live on while he waited for the next. 
 
 Of course, his uncle and aunt understood the 
 circumstances, and he was told to remember that 
 he had a "home to go to." He was told to re- 
 member it on subsequent occasions. But actors 
 in their novitiate, without theatrical families to 
 smooth their path, need a home to go to very 
 often, and Tatham, who was denied the possi- 
 bility of saving anything while an engagement 
 lasted, needed one even oftener than most of 
 them. As time went on, the Spauldings did not 
 actually conclude that he had been misled by 
 vanity and hadn't any aptitude for acting, but 
 they sighed that it was "strange he didn't do 
 better"; they did not say bluntly that he was 
 "to blame," but they said disparagingly he was 
 "unlucky." It began to be obvious to them that 
 a young man who had a mother to support would, 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 5 
 
 after all, be more suitably employed in a perma- 
 nent clerkship than in a precarious profession. 
 And their nephew became acutely conscious of 
 their view. 
 
 He was acutely conscious of it this evening. 
 Another third-rate tour had reached its last 
 night, and to-morrow he would have to present 
 himself at Regent's Park once more. He sick- 
 ened to think of it. He was performing a part 
 devoid of human nature, in a melodrama that 
 outraged possibilities, to an audience for whom 
 it was fully good enough; but he had looked for- 
 ward to better things, and his heart was in his 
 calling, though its apprenticeship was foul. 
 Sentiment possessed him as he spoke the final 
 lines of the balderdash and left the stage, won- 
 dering whether he would ever stand upon a stage 
 again. Envy of the other men assailed him, un- 
 talented and unambitious as he knew most of 
 them to be at least they belonged to "the pro- 
 fession." It was their destiny, while his own 
 foothold in it was so insecure. Yes, he had al- 
 ways felt it to be insecure. Even across his 
 brightest moments had rolled the misgiving, 
 "Will it last?" 
 
 "Galbraith," he said in the dressing-room, to 
 a tall, spare man seated before a looking-glass, 
 
"how did you find engagements at the start 
 before people had heard of you?" 
 
 Mr. Galbraith, who was habited as a parson, 
 and had still to play in two scenes, was smoking 
 a pipe, while he dabbed chalk on his hair to be- 
 token anguish induced by a prodigal son. He 
 was a man of education, who had once been a 
 West End actor. His descent was due to drink, 
 a vice which he solemnly renounced as often as 
 compassion entrusted him with another chance 
 to earn his bread. For weeks and sometimes 
 months at a stretch he would be a total abstainer, 
 proclaiming barley-water his beverage for life 
 only to succumb, in his most confident hour, and 
 be dismissed abusively from one company more. 
 He remained in this one because, when his out- 
 break occurred, the tour had been so near its end 
 that the manager had shirked the trouble of re- 
 placing him, but the spectacle of an intoxicated 
 parson exhorting his son to reformation had in- 
 jured the week's receipts. 
 
 "Before people had heard of me it was easier 
 to find engagements," he exclaimed; "it's since 
 people know me I can't get shopped." 
 
 "You know what I mean, Galbraith. What 
 can I do ? Answering the advertisements in The 
 Era is no use nobody ever answers me. It 
 amounts to this, if I don't find something else 
 
JTHE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 7 
 
 very soon, I shall have to leave the professionl" 
 
 The imminence of such a catastrophe did not 
 seem to thrill Galbraith; he puffed smoke 
 placidly. 
 
 "Where were they when you came up?" he 
 asked. "Is it near my cue?" 
 
 "No, Miss Lane hadn't been on yet; you've 
 heaps of time. Do you think I shall ever do any 
 good, Galbraith?" 
 
 "You'll do better than you're doing now, boy. 
 I don't think you'll ever play Hamlet." 
 
 "Look here, I couldn't ask many, in the sort 
 of crowds I've been with; but you can tell me, 
 you're a finished actor " 
 
 "Finished and done for," assented Galbraith 
 cheerfully. 
 
 "Not if you'd have enough will! Any man- 
 agement would be glad to have you if they could 
 rely on your resolutions. I don't want to fool 
 myself ; tell me the truth. I know I lack experi- 
 ence and I can't get experience if I don't get 
 parts but supposing I can hold out and I do 
 get the experience, am I ever likely to succeed? 
 Do you think I've any gift for the stage?" 
 
 Galbraith had been before the public for thirty 
 years, but Tatham had put a question that no 
 actor had ever asked him before. He reflected 
 before he spoke. 
 
8 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Laddie," he said, and he had no aspiration 
 to make epigrams, "the greatest gifts for the 
 stage are money, and luck. Almost anybody can 
 learn to act fairly well in time; and if you have 
 money, you can pay premiums, and you can take 
 a theatre, and you can commission popular au- 
 thors to write parts that fit you. In a first-class 
 stock company of the old days, Mr. Albert Jer- 
 nyngham would be playing 'Charles, his friend* 
 he has money, or, rather, he has people behind 
 him with money, and so he's an actor-manager 
 and plays the impassioned hero. Leaving money 
 out of it, luck's the chief thing with good luck 
 you rise, and with bad luck you stick. Good luck 
 gave Fatty Spencer, who has never played any 
 character but himself in his whole career, the 
 chance to make a hit at the old Diadem; they 
 happened to want just such a personality as his 
 in Pulteney's Lies for a Living. Fatty's very 
 defects shone as priceless merits. The public 
 shrieked at him, and he's been engaged to play 
 himself in other pieces, at big terms, ever since. 
 Plenty of men who could act him off the stage 
 are feeding at Lockhart's. Tipplers? Improvi- 
 dent? Not a bit of it just bad luck. They 
 aren't like me, they haven't themselves to blame. 
 Somehow they never chance to get shopped in a 
 thing that runs. They're engaged for West End 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 9 
 
 shows, they give their time to rehearsals, and they 
 get good notices. But the play's a frost, and in 
 a month or six weeks they're out again. Perhaps 
 you suppose they needn't be out for long, if the 
 critics praise them? Optimism of youth, 
 Tatham ; there's no continuous service of engage- 
 ments even for the Fatties. Besides, by-and-hy 
 they get known as Jonahs. That's a reputation 
 that ruined an actor who'd been said by the Press 
 to be the greatest tragedian that England had 
 had since Edmund Kean. In his case, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, it was all bunkum, for he had been 
 in several runs, but he did get called a Jonah, 
 and it settled him. Once let a manager say of a 
 man, or woman, 'Oh, yes, very clever, be excel- 
 lent in the part, of course, but an unlucky name 
 never seen in a success,' and it's likely to mean 
 a vacation of twelve months in the year." 
 
 He knocked the dust from his pipe, and went 
 leisurely downstairs. Tatham, when he had 
 washed, and changed his clothes, returned there 
 too. He did not leave the theatre yet. Most of 
 the players would travel to London in the morn- 
 ing, like himself, but others foresaw mean streets 
 in Liverpool and elsewhere, and there were good- 
 byes and good wishes to be exchanged. He 
 loitered in the wings and listened to Galbraith 
 fervidly delivering a speech of hackneyed clap- 
 
10 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 trap which he ridiculed in the dressing-rooms. 
 The unsophisticated audience greeted its climax 
 with a burst of applause, while behind the waver- 
 ing walls of the prodigal's narrow chambers a 
 grubby scene-shifter wheeled forward the porch 
 of the "Old Home" for the final set. The "Old 
 Home," to the accompaniment of incidental 
 music, played out of tune by an exiguous orches- 
 tra, was duly presented. The faithful house- 
 keeper, who remembered the dear young master 
 when he was a boy, bless his heart, attitudinised 
 at the right of the stage, to hearken jubilantly to 
 a peal of wedding-bells,, which the prompter, as 
 usual, sounded at the left; and an anxious lead- 
 ing man, on the verge of unemployment, de- 
 claimed as a radiant bridegroom to a despondent 
 leading lady whom he might never meet after 
 to-night, that "in the golden years before them 
 they would never part again." 
 
 The curtain fell. The company scurried to 
 tear off their costumes and pack their small be- 
 longings. Tatham knew that all the men, ex- 
 cepting Galbraith, who had drunk nothing but 
 tea and barley-water for ten days, were impatient 
 to get outside before the bars closed. In their 
 haste to do so, some would neglect to remove their 
 paint. The back of the stage seemed suddenly 
 to have dissolved into the night the canvas 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 11 
 
 meadows had been hauled into the "flies," and a 
 real moon displayed confusion in a freezing yard. 
 A vicious wind swept the bare stage as "The Old 
 Home" and "The Strong Room in the Bank of 
 England" were stacked on to a wagon. 
 
 By twos and threes the company reappeared, 
 carrying garments rolled in newspaper, and non- 
 descript luggage made of straw: "Well, ta-ta, 
 dear!" "See you some day!" "Coming next 
 door, cully?" Among the last to descend was 
 Elsie Lane, a girl whose characterisation of an 
 Irish waif supplied the one touch of humanity 
 that the piece contained. She, too, had found 
 engagements in the West End, but, unlike Gal- 
 braith, she had never had important parts nor 
 been able to establish herself there perhaps be- 
 cause she wasn't tall enough, perhaps be- 
 cause she wasn't pretty enough, certainly not 
 because she wasn't clever enough. She was one 
 of those actresses of whom the critics continue 
 to WTite, "A capital character sketch was af- 
 forded by Miss So-and-so, who has yet to attain 
 in London the position to which her talents en- 
 title her." When a country actress is out of 
 work and old, and all hope has been dead in her 
 for many years, sometimes she re-reads that criti- 
 cism in her poor book of Press cuttings. Elsie 
 Lane's age now was seven or eight and twenty, 
 
12 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 and with her pale, serious face and her quiet 
 manner, she had seemed to Christopher more 
 adapted to a vicarage than to a theatre until he 
 saw her act. 
 
 They went through the stage-door together. 
 Her lodging lay in the same direction as his, and 
 he carried her bag for her. The silent roads were 
 slippery, but he couldn't give her his arm, because 
 he had his own portmanteau in the other hand. 
 
 "I suppose you haven't settled for anything 
 else?" she asked as they blundered along. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I haven't, either. Isn't it horribly cold!" 
 Her shoulders were hunched under her spring 
 jacket. "I can lend you to-day's Era if you like; 
 there may be something useful in it." 
 
 "Thanks, I've seen it," he said; "I've written. 
 I squandered fourpence on stamps this morning. 
 I shan't hear from anybody." 
 
 "One never does." 
 
 "Well, there's no need for you to worry 
 you re sure to be all right one day." 
 
 "It looks like it, doesn't it!" She had applied 
 as a "Strong Character Actress (tall)," and a 
 "Smart Juvenile Lady (petite)," and as a 
 "Useful Lady (to complete company)" prac- 
 tically as everything except a "Pathetic Child 
 Actress (accustomed to dying)," and a "Col- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 13 
 
 cured Songstress." Enjoined by the advertisers 
 to "State absolutely lowest," sbe had stated terms 
 that were abject; commanded to forward "photos 
 and refs," she had sent the most flattering of her 
 photographs, and referred to the most prominent 
 of the managers by whom she was known. Some 
 of the advertisements had added, "Silence, a po- 
 lite negative," and despite the variety of her en- 
 deavours, and the stamps that she had enclosed 
 for the photographs to be returned, it was the 
 only politeness that she had received. 
 
 "Was it always so difficult?" asked Tatham; 
 "I haven't been in it very long myself, you 
 know." 
 
 "It has always been just as bad in my time; 
 it was easier before there was so much musical 
 comedy, they say there aren't so many vacan- 
 cies as there used to be for people who don't sing 
 and dance. Those who pay the piper call the 
 tune, of course ; audiences have got to have what 
 they want; but the musical comedy tune is a 
 funeral march to a good many of us. I say, I do 
 wish you'd give me that bag back!" 
 
 It was bumping against him provokingly, but 
 he said it wasn't. A belated mill-hand clattered 
 by them. After the mill-hand passed, the white, 
 vivid distance was unpeopled. Saying a little 
 
14 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 more, they trudged through the sleeping town 
 till the girl's doorstep was reached. 
 
 "Thanks awfully," she said, shivering. "I'm 
 not sure whether I shall go by the early train to- 
 morrow or not if we don't meet at the station, 
 good-bye." 
 
 "Good-bye." 
 
 "And good luck!" 
 
 He put the bag down, and their numbed hands 
 were clasped for a moment. 
 
 "Good luck to you, Miss Lane," he said. 
 
 Long afterwards when he had forgotten in 
 what town it had been he remembered that walk 
 through white, empty streets, and his wishing 
 her "luck" on a doorstep. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE drawing-room at Regent's Park looked 
 palatial after the "bed-sitting rooms" in which 
 he had been living for the last three months, and 
 he was cordially received. Excepting for an 
 explanation that the spare room would shortly 
 be required for one of the married daughters and 
 that an extra bed had been put for him in his 
 cousin Harold's room, instead an arrangement 
 which, he surmised, must be vastly irksome to 
 his cousin Harold there was little to remind 
 him that he was in the way. The family ques- 
 tioned him about his doings, and listened smiling 
 to an account of some incidents of the tour. And 
 when his aunt inquired, "Of course, you've no 
 idea yet what you're going to do next?" her tone 
 was so light that he could nearly persuade him- 
 self that her heart didn't sink when he said "no." 
 
 Then, by way of contributing gossip of inter- 
 est, Mr. Spaulding informed the group that the 
 son of a neighbour had just gone on the stage 
 and exhibited such ability that he had been en- 
 gaged at ten pounds a week for two years on 
 
 15 
 
16 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 end. The hop merchant, astute in his own busi- 
 ness, "knew it for a fact, for the boy's father had 
 told him." 
 
 "Wonderful!" he exclaimed admiringly to his 
 nephew; "isn't it?" 
 
 The wonder was, that he had credited the lie, 
 but Tatham couldn't say so ; he answered that it 
 was wonderful indeed. 
 
 And Harold, who was a dandy, and was al- 
 ways chaffed for the elaborate care that he took 
 of his clothes, had been so good as to huddle them 
 together disastrously, to make space for the 
 guest's. Some guests are never hilariously con- 
 tent. 
 
 In ordinary circumstances, next morning, 
 Tatham would have gone to see his mother, but 
 the lady had recently removed to a boarding- 
 house at Sweetbay, so he lunched with his aunt. 
 The other men were in the City. 
 
 "Sweetbay must be much nicer for her than 
 Dalston," he said; "I was very glad to hear she 
 was going. Does she like it, do you know?" 
 
 "I think she does," said Mrs. Spaulding; "yes, 
 I think she likes it very much better. She'd been 
 anxious to get away ^from London for a long 
 time, she told me." 
 
 "Oh, you've seen her?" He was pleased, for 
 the Spauldings had no great liking for his 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 17 
 
 mother; their invitations to her were few, and 
 their services perfunctory. 
 
 "No- er I did want to ask her to come and 
 stay with us for a week, but we've had such a 
 houseful all the winter that there was really no 
 opportunity there have been friends of the boys 
 staying here, and one thing and another. I had 
 a letter from her. She said she didn't want to 
 worry you about it you were doing all you 
 could but she wasn't comfortable where she 
 was, and there was a place at Sweetbay that 
 would take her for very little more." 
 
 " You've sent her money again? That was 
 awfully kind of you." 
 
 "Oh, well, of course, we couldn't let her want 
 it doesn't amount to a great deal. One would 
 
 like to do more than that, but " She sighed. 
 
 "Your uncle has so many claims upon him, 
 you've no idea! . . . Of course it's unfortunate 
 you find the stage such uphill work. If you 
 could get regular engagements it'd be different. 
 You know, I wonder you don't try for a good 
 part at a first-class theatre, Chris. Modesty's 
 all very well, but there's such a thing as being 
 too modest; I think you're a little too er I 
 think you're a little too slow to move. I don't 
 think you've enough confidence in yourself. If 
 you never look for better things, you'll never get 
 
18 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 them, you know; you mustn't expect the prizes 
 of your profession to come and look for you." 
 
 "You don't quite grasp the position," he ven- 
 tured. "As an unknown man, I might spend 
 years 'trying for a good part in a first-class 
 theatre' without getting so far as a word with the 
 manager. If I didn't accept the kind of thing 
 that's possible, I should never get anything at 
 all." 
 
 She replied by a reference to an actor who 
 had lately made a successful first appearance in 
 London after twenty years of struggle and pri- 
 vation. "There's a new young man just 'come 
 out,' " she said ; "we saw him the other night and 
 he's excellent. I daresay you could have done 
 it just as well he looks something like you; he's 
 quite a beginner, I had never heard his name 
 before. You need to aim higher, Chris, you want 
 more pluck. Of course you've got us f and we 
 shall always be very glad to have you here when 
 we can put you up but I should like to see you 
 do better for your own sake ; I am sure you'd be 
 happier if you were more independent." 
 
 Chicken stuck in his throat. 
 
 "If Uncle George can still give me a berth, 
 I'm ready to go into the City to-morrow," he 
 said thickly. 
 
 "Oh, nonsense, there's no occasion to do any- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 19 
 
 thing impetuous like that I It really all depends 
 on how long er whether your prospects im- 
 prove or not. Of course, if things go better with 
 you soon, well and good; of course we're quite 
 ready to make ourselves responsible for your 
 mother altogether while you're out of an engage- 
 ment, just as we've always been. Only you ought 
 to bustle as much as you can and not let the grass 
 grow under your feet, you know! Because if 
 you do have to give up your profession and turn 
 your mind to other things, it'd be a mistake to 
 begin too late. You're not a boy, Chris, and 
 er naturally, you'd have a lot to learn before 
 you could hope to be of much use to your uncle. 
 ... A little more?" 
 
 Nor did he want any cheese. And there was 
 no grass growing under his feet that afternoon 
 on the sloppy pavements of the Strand. He was 
 bound for his agent's. He spoke of Mr. Albe- 
 marle as his "agent" because a booking fee had 
 been paid to secure Mr. Albemarle's interest. 
 Mr. Albemarle did not speak of Tatham as his 
 "client" because he did not remember Tatham's 
 name. A narrow staircase led to a sparsely fur- 
 nished apartment, of which a conspicuous fea- 
 ture was a vast assortment of faded photographs. 
 There were photographs of sirens being arch in 
 musical comedies, of heroines being distraught ia 
 
,20 FHE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 dramas, of heroes propping brows with fore- 
 fingers and straining violently to look profound. 
 A goodly number of the originals waited in atti- 
 tudes of despondence on the forms that lined the 
 walls, and at a table in the corner a young woman 
 with dyed hair, piled over a cheap and obvious 
 frame, was clicking a typewriter. 
 
 Tatham discovered space to sit down, and 
 glanced round the room to see if any acquaint- 
 ance was present. All were strangers to him. 
 From Kennington and Camberwell, from Brix- 
 ton and East Ham, the theatre folk had jour- 
 neyed, not a few of them afoot, in the prayer 
 that they might "hear of something." They had 
 put on the least shabby of their clothes and to 
 Tatham's eyes the women looked less indigent 
 than the men, but their flowered hats and flimsy 
 smartness shrieked their poverty to one another. 
 Many of the crowd had spent a morning of de- 
 jection "making the round" of the agents' offices. 
 When Mr. Albemarle failed them, they would 
 thread their way along the crowded Strand 
 again with aching feet, and empty stomachs, 
 and affected jauntiness, hoping to the last. They 
 might meet a "pal who knew of something," or 
 who would, at least, be "good for a glass of 
 bitter." There might be a shady manager col- 
 lecting a new company in the public-houses; 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 21 
 
 thieir salaries with him would be uncertain, but 
 even to take a risk would be better than to go 
 back with no news at all. There were wives and 
 children awaiting the return to Kennington and 
 Camberwell; there were lodging-house keepers 
 clamorous for rent. To-day the Strand is wider, 
 but the progress of the players in it just as slow. 
 
 It was four o'clock when Tatham was at last 
 admitted to the agent's presence. The gentle- 
 man was occupied at a desk. He had a silk hat 
 on his head, and a long cigar in his mouth, each 
 at an angle of forty-five degrees. 
 
 "Well, Mr. er " he said hurriedly, "I'm 
 
 afraid I've nothing for you to-day; things are 
 very quiet just now." 
 
 Never had Tatham heard him say anything 
 more optimistic since the occasion when the fee 
 was paid. But again a forlorn effort to prolong 
 the scene proved useless. 
 
 The actor went slowly out. He had not paid 
 a booking fee at any other office; he was not in 
 a position to pay one now. He was not a chorus 
 girl ; some chorus girls were able to secure agents' 
 interest without that formality. Blankly he 
 questioned, as he had questioned on the same spot 
 a score of times, what course was open. He felt 
 weak, futile, and contemptible for being so, yet 
 what could he do? He remembered how, despair- 
 
2 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 ing one night under the portico of a theatre, 
 where an ex-Society woman was attracting all 
 London by her beauty, he had drooped in the 
 glare gazing at her photographs and thinking 
 she must be compassionate. He remembered how 
 he had pencilled on his card an appeal for a min- 
 ute's interview and sent it in to her, and how he 
 had shrunk from a scene-shifter's eyes as the 
 fellow brought him her curt refusal. "What 
 could he do?" At the foot of a career in which, 
 for all but the moneyed and the influential, the 
 potent factor is Chance, he could do nothing but 
 what he did, possessing his soul in patience, and 
 in his uncle's house. And every evening his 
 uncle asked, "Well, any news?" 
 
 So six weeks went by. 
 
 "Well, any news?" He meant it kindly, but 
 his guest came to dread the return from the City 
 and that question. 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "Humph!" The tone conveyed his reflections. 
 
 One wet afternoon, when Tatham, having gone 
 down from Mr. Albemarle's office, loitered in 
 the shelter of the street door, something hap- 
 pened. Nothing sensational Mr. Albemarle 
 came down too. As the client stood wondering 
 which way to turn next, the agent brushed past 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER fc* 
 
 him, and loitered also, looking to right and left 
 for a cab. 
 
 "Rotten weather !" he said casually to Tatham. 
 
 "Filthy, isn't it?" said Tatham. "Will you 
 come and have a drink?" 
 
 Now, in Mr. Albemarle the proposal of a 
 drink aroused no such rejoicing as it inspired in 
 many of his humbler clients ; he could afford to 
 drink at his own expense, and did so very often, 
 but it happened that at the moment the sugges- 
 tion fell pleasantly on his ears. All the same, 
 he hesitated. Coming from the lips of an ob- 
 scure young "pro," the invitation was either a 
 strange "bit of luck" or a piece of "infernal 
 cheek." He looked Tatham in the face before 
 he spoke. 
 
 "I don't mind if I do," he said graciously. 
 
 So lowly is the path to histrionic fame that 
 the Varsity man was conscious of appearing to 
 have improved his position as he entered the 
 Bodega with Mr. Albemarle. And, indeed, a 
 dozen loungers there regarded him curiously. 
 
 "What'll you have?" he asked. 
 
 "Mine's the usual," said the personage to the 
 barman. He waved a condescending hand in 
 several directions. "Things are very quiet just 
 now," he remarked, forgetting that he had just 
 delivered his stock phrase in the office. 
 
24 [THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "I find it their normal state. You 'think 
 you'll be able to find me something next week/ 
 do you?" 
 
 "What?" Obviously he was surprised, but he 
 recovered himself in an instant. "Oh, I dare- 
 say. Always drop in when you're passing, that's 
 the best way always pleased to see you. If 
 anything turns up, there you are!" 
 
 "I've been dropping in for eighteen months. 
 Nothing has turned up so far. My name's 
 Christopher Tatham." 
 
 "Of course it is," said Mr. Albemarle. "I 
 know your name very well. I can't shop every- 
 body; there aren't enough parts to go round, 
 Latham, old chap. I'd shop the whole blessed 
 profession, if I could, what do you think? it'd 
 suit me all right; but you see what it is, there's 
 too many at the game. What's your line ?" 
 
 "I've been playing character. 'Tatham,' not 
 'Latham'!" 
 
 "I remember now it had slipped my memory; 
 just for the moment." The barman put the 
 glasses on the counter. "Here's fortune!" 
 
 "But what I want to play is lead." 
 
 "Lead. Right!" 
 
 "Do you think you could manage it for me?" 
 
 "Do I think I could manage it?" echoed Mr. 
 Albemarle. He looked into Tatham's eyes sig- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 25 
 
 nificantly, and his dramatic pause was so pro- 
 tracted that his stare became embarrassing. "Do 
 I think I could manage it? No, I don't 'think/ 
 Latham I know!" 
 
 "That's encouraging." 
 
 "Who made Bernard Leigh?" The query was 
 darted aggressively. "Who made Eric Lati- 
 mer? Would Billy Hudson be where he is if 
 it hadn't been for me ?" Tatham much feared he 
 had offended him for ever. "What I can't 
 'manage' ain't worth managing." 
 
 "I suppose not." 
 
 "Don't worry." After all, he hadn't been of- 
 fended his leer was supremely reassuring. It 
 conveyed a secret compact between himself and 
 Tatham, was charged with esoteric confidences 
 which, though Tatham failed to understand them, 
 promised to flourish master-keys among portals 
 to fame. "Leading men with the right appear- 
 ance ain't difficult to shop." 
 
 The next instant, with appalling swiftness, he 
 drained his whisky-and-soda and turned to go. 
 Hope swooned. 
 
 "Have another!" 
 
 "What? No, no more . . . well one, for 
 luck!" He imbibed the second leisurely, but dis- 
 coursed without a break on the abominable in- 
 gratitude that he had experienced at the hands 
 
26 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 of theatrical stars who owed their eminence to 
 his services. Suspensive, Tatham waited for a 
 chance to interpose a question. At last, when 
 the other was saying "Hell," as a prelude to a 
 further reminiscence, he exclaimed : 
 
 "You know, I'm awfully keen on getting 
 something at once, Mr. Albemarle! I've got to 
 find another engagement right off. Of course 
 the money's an object I depend on the profes- 
 sion but I'm not standing out for terms. Now, 
 how soon do you think you could get me a lead- 
 ing part, at, say well, at any figure at all? 
 Frankly! You can't do it this evening, or to- 
 morrow morning, but give me an idea when it 
 might be. That's not asking too much, is it?" 
 
 Something in the appeal went home to Mr. 
 Albemarle, also the second drink was human- 
 ising him. He was temporarily truthful. 
 
 "Look here," he said familiarly, "you want a 
 shop, don't you? What's the good of kidding 
 about 'leading business'? What you want's a bit 
 every Saturday morning to pay your way, like 
 everybody else; ain't I right?" 
 
 "Perfectly right," said Tatham, dismayed. 
 
 "Very well, then! you know, and / know it's 
 not a scrap of use your opening your mouth too 
 wide and calling yourself a 'leading man.' Jump 
 at whatever you can get, that's my advice to you. 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 27 
 
 They're sending out a tour from the Sceptre 
 get round there to-morrow, twelve sharp. Ask 
 for Mr. Bailey. Say I sent you. Mind, I can't 
 promise anything'll come of it you won't be 
 the only one on the spot, but it's a tip. It's a big 
 cast, and they haven't settled for any of the small 
 parts yet." 
 
 The descent from the prospect seen five min- 
 utes ago was steep, and the cost of the entertain- 
 ment alarming so alarming that Tatham deter- 
 mined to walk to Regent's Park, instead of tak- 
 ing a bus. But as he turned down Bedford 
 Street he was not disconsolate. There was at 
 any rate a chance of sorts. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THERE were eighteen parts to be filled for the 
 provincial tour of the play at the Sceptre The- 
 atre, and actors and actresses desirous of filling 
 them were informed that Mr. Bailey was to be 
 found in the business manager's office upstairs. 
 When Tatham, who arrived betimes, explored 
 the quarter indicated, not more than fifty to 
 sixty applicants sat and stood about the landing, 
 awaiting admittance to the room; but their num- 
 ber was continuously reinforced. By half -past 
 one, when Mr. Bailey, having disposed of other" 
 matters, proceeded to attack the task before him, 
 the staircase had become impassable, and at the 
 foot, groups of men sat morosely on the ground. 
 
 Behind the enamelled door, visible only to the 
 most fortunate, the eagerly sought interviews 
 seemed, to those interviewed, unpromisingly 
 brief; to those outside, they seemed eternal, and 
 as the weary hours lagged by, several girls who 
 could find no space to sit, clung weakly to the 
 banisters. 
 
 It was Tatham's turn at last. 
 
 28 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 29 
 
 One girl's limbs felt as if they must give way ; 
 she screwed up the courage: 
 
 "Oh, do let me go next!" 
 
 "I beg your pardon certainly!" 
 
 The promptness of the assent amazed her. 
 She turned and regarded him thankfully as he 
 drew back. In that throng of wearied mediocri- 
 ties fighting for bread in an overstocked profes- 
 sion, a man and a girl's gaze met for the first 
 time, and they smiled at each other. 
 
 So, although he had no idea who she was, 
 Tatham trusted, while he continued to stand 
 there, that behind the enamelled door the inter- 
 view was proving satisfactory to her. And when 
 she came out, he glanced at her inquiringly. Did 
 she shake her head? he wasn't sure; but she had 
 made her meaning clear. "I'm sorry," he mur- 
 mured as she passed. 
 
 The enamelled door opened again and an 
 underling appeared on the threshold. He said 
 in a high-pitched voice, "Ladies and gentlemen 
 are not to wait, please; Mr. Bailey can't see any 
 more !" 
 
 Dismay gripped Tatham's heart. Courtesy 
 may cost a theatrical engagement, which is one 
 of the reasons why there is no superabundance 
 of it in the theatrical world. 
 
 'A murmur of consternation swelled over the 
 
SO THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 landing; from the landing to the lowest step it 
 travelled, and was echoed in the hall. As the 
 girl started to go down, the packed rows of 
 applicants broke into disorder, and the view on 
 the staircase was a jumble of dejected backs. 
 She lingered an instant for Tatham to be beside 
 her. 
 
 "I hope you haven't lost anything by giving 
 me your turn?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't suppose so; I daresay all the 
 men's parts were settled before you went in." 
 It was possible, however, that none was settled, 
 that Mr. Bailey intended to make his selection 
 later among the men who had had the luck to be 
 seen. 
 
 "It was awfully kind of you." 
 
 "It was nothing." 
 
 She was very young, perhaps no more than 
 seventeen, but she had been bred in a calling in 
 which few girls remain bashful long. The tone 
 in which she spoke to him was the frank, fa- 
 miliar tone of a young woman at once unac- 
 quainted with reserve, and well accustomed to 
 take care of herself; the gaze she raised to him, 
 from a face which had pink-and-white youthful- 
 ness for its chief charm, was steadily unembar- 
 rassed. When she represented a girl of her own 
 years on the stage, of course, she comported her- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 31 
 
 self with more juvenility than any girl of seven- 
 teen that ever lived, for it is a theatrical conven- 
 tion that girls of seventeen caper about a draw- 
 ing-room as if they were seven, but she crossed 
 a room without capering in real life. 
 
 He was good-looking, and his depression was 
 manifest. She spoke again: 
 
 "I'm most awfully grateful to you, really! I 
 felt as if I couldn't stand it another second, or 
 I wouldn't have had the cheek to ask you." 
 
 "It wasn't any use though, eh?" 
 
 "I don't think so he took my name, but I 
 don't fancy it'll come off. Have you been out 
 long?" 
 
 "About six weeks." 
 
 "Oh, that's not so bad," she said; "I've been 
 doing nothing for months. What were you with 
 last?" 
 
 He told her the title of the melodrama in which 
 he had toured last, and wondered if he could add 
 "Good-morning" without being abrupt, for he 
 was in no humour for small-talk with a stranger. 
 But evidently her fatigue was not mental. She 
 continued to question him; and their passage to 
 the street was of necessity slow. On the pave- 
 ment they came to a standstill together. 
 
 "What shall you try for now?" she inquired. 
 
82 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "I've no idea. Have you heard of anything 
 else?" 
 
 "No, I must have a look at the ads in to-day's 
 ^Floats. I haven't seen it yet.'* 
 
 His distaste for her companionship was pass- 
 ing, even it had already passed. He foresaw 
 that he would feel very lonely in another minute, 
 as he moved aimlessly along; the girl's interest 
 in his prospects was not unwelcome. 
 
 "Z haven't seen it, either," he said. "There's 
 a newsagent's round the corner let's go and 
 get a copy." 
 
 And then the girl did a happy thing she ex- 
 claimed "Come on," and laughed. Precisely at 
 what she laughed she didn't know, but on a sud- 
 den his spirits rose, and he liked her. 
 
 His spirits dropped when snow began to fall, 
 for the purchase of Floats had left him with five- 
 pence for his capital and he could not take her 
 into a confectioner's. They sought employment, 
 studying the advertisement columns together, in 
 the sheltered quietude of a mews. Because he 
 was an impecunious gentleman he was humiliated 
 at having to shelter her there. Because she was 
 a little mummer in the rank and file of "the pro- 
 fession" she was admiringly surprised by his 
 humiliation. 
 
 "I think it was very generous of you to buy 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 33 
 
 the paper," she said; "you might have seen it in 
 a bar and had a drink for the money. . . . 
 What's there funny about it? Go on, now, find 
 something useful, do! this won't buy the baby 
 a frock." 
 
 "Well, here's something," he announced. 
 "'WANTED, to rehearse next week, Full Com- 
 pany (with exceptions). To reliable artistes 
 very long tour assured/ What do you say to 
 that?" 
 
 "It's the best of them yet. Let me look; 
 where's one to write? Oh, 'Call'! Where is it? 
 '20 Thackeray Gardens, Clapham Junction. 
 Three to six.' Thackeray was an author, that's 
 where they got that name from. What time is 
 it now?" 
 
 He glanced at his watch. "Nearly five. I say, 
 you must be starving!" 
 
 "No, I'm not; I took a sandwich with me 
 I knew what it'd be. Oh, well, it's no good my 
 going to Clapham." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I couldn't get there soon enough." 
 
 "It won't take you any longer to get there 
 than it takes me." 
 
 "I haven't enough money in my purse. I 
 should have to go home first and borrow it from 
 
mother it's too far; we're in diggings at Net- 
 ting Hill." 
 
 They considered ruefully. A brougham swung 
 round the mews, and startled them backwards 
 into a puddle. 
 
 "Fivepence won't do it, I suppose?" said 
 Tatham, looking at his boot. 
 
 "I don't know; I forget. Anyhow, it'll be a 
 tinpot sort of show. I'm not sure that it's good 
 enough." 
 
 "Any show for me" he said. "I'll tell you 
 what " 
 
 "Well, you can go, of course; fivepence'll be 
 enough for one." 
 
 "I'll tell you what: let's hurry up and find a 
 pawnbroker's, and I'll pop my watch." 
 
 "As if I'd let you just to pay my fare!" 
 
 "Well, why shouldn't I?" 
 
 "It isn't likely. Popping your watch for me !" 
 
 "I should have to pop it for myself to-morrow. 
 Come on, there's a good girl, don't waste time! 
 Look here, if you don't go, I shan't go, either. 
 That's a fact. I mean it." He stood looking in 
 her eyes until she smiled. Her smile lit her face 
 very prettily. 
 
 "You are 3 nice boy," she said. 
 
 She did indeed think him very nice, and when 
 they had found a pawnshop and she waited for 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 35 
 
 him outside, the pleasing fancy crossed her mind 
 that it was "almost as if they were married." 
 
 "How much did they lend you on it?" she 
 asked when he came back. A new authority 
 was in her tone. 
 
 "Thirty-five shillings." 
 "My! It must have been a fine watch." 
 "Don't speak of it in the past; I hope to see 
 it again," he said. "Which is our way we go 
 from Victoria, don't we? We'd better take a bus 
 from Charing Cross." 
 
 "You haven't told me your name?" 
 "Christopher Tatham. What's yours?" 
 "Peggy Harper. I knew a 'Chris' once; he 
 was a ventriloquist," she observed. "This is my 
 card." 
 
 The card told him no more than the name that 
 she had already communicated; the passion of 
 ladies in the lower ranks of his profession for 
 distributing their printed cards at every oppor- 
 tunity surprised him again after she had paused 
 among the crowd, to rummage in a pocket that 
 took a long time to discover. 
 
 The presence of the other passengers did not 
 constrain her on the journey, and he found it 
 agreeable enough far pleasanter than if he had 
 been alone. It was not unamusing to wander 
 among mean streets, inquiring for Thackeray 
 
36 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 Gardens with a happy-go-lucky girl who said, 
 "I daresay we shall have come out here for noth- 
 ing, after all," and laughed, as if coming to 
 Clapham for nothing would he a capital joke. 
 It was fun to wait with her in the unprepossess- 
 ing parlour of a lodging-house and hear her 
 whisper, with a peremptory nod as the door-knob 
 turned, "You speak first!" 
 
 The advertiser who, it transpired, called 
 himself Armytage was evidently attired for 
 the occasion. He wore a frock-coat, in combina- 
 tion with a summer waistcoat, much crumpled, 
 and the trousers of a tweed suit. A garnet pin 
 ornamented the wrong portion of a made-up tie. 
 Early in the interview he confessed, with a lugu- 
 brious shake of the head, that long as he had 
 been in management, he had not realised until 
 this afternoon what a multitude of actors and 
 actresses were out of work. The overture 
 sounded unpromising, but it appeared by the 
 light of his later remarks that vacancies might 
 possibly remain in the company for just such 
 "artistes" as Tatham and Miss Harper. His in- 
 tention was to open in three weeks' time at Sweet- 
 bay, he informed them, and "the money, though 
 small, was sure." Figures revealed it to be small 
 indeed. On taking a note of their references and 
 addresses, he was plainly impressed by a terrace 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 37 
 
 In Regent's Park and regarded Tatham with 
 new interest. 
 
 "I suppose you could dress the part," he said 
 "got a classy modern wardrobe?" 
 
 "I've got clothes, yes," said Tatham. He 
 hoped with increased force that the part was a 
 good one, since his mother would see him in it. 
 
 ' 'Dress well, on and off,' I make it a rule ; 
 it pays for actors to look like gentlemen. And 
 what about you, my dear frocks all right?" 
 
 "Oh, I should do you credit!" said the girl 
 flippantly. Tatham envied her professional self- 
 possession. 
 
 Mr. Armytage repeated that they might hear 
 from him in two or three days, and the "artistes" 
 left the villa thoughtfully. 
 
 "He sounds like a humbug," said Tatham, 
 "doesn't he?" 
 
 "He doesn't sound up to much," she assented. 
 "It'll be a rotten show, of course. Frocks? I'd 
 fake up any old rag and be good enough for his 
 crowd. But the money may be safe with him 
 you can't go by manner; the bogus people often 
 sound the best. I shan't take it if anything else 
 comes along in the meantime, but he may be all 
 right. He's one of the old school never been 
 to school; but I was in panto with a manager 
 who might have been his twin brother, and we 
 
38 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 got paid every Saturday morning as right as 
 rain. Goodness ! a lot of the men who leave you 
 stranded might be Johnnies from Oxford and 
 Cambridge, by their clothes and the way they 
 talk. Education don't make people straight; 
 some of the biggest bounders in the profession 
 used to be swells before they went on the stage. 
 I expect you'll change the profession changes 
 everybody." 
 
 "Thank you," he said. 
 
 "Well, you will! it's sure to spoil you you 
 won't keep like you are now; you can't!" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because they never do." 
 
 "But why not?" 
 
 She reflected. "Well, if fellows behave like 
 cads anywhere else they get cold-shouldered, you 
 see, and in the profession they don't. I suppose 
 it tempts them to be crooked, when they know 
 they won't be thought any the worse of for it. 
 I say, this isn't the way to the station where 
 are you going?" 
 
 "We're going to have something to eat," said 
 Tatham. "Do you think it's too soon?" 
 
 Her eyes widened at him, almost pathetically, 
 and then she broke into a laugh again ; there was 
 a note of hysteria in the laugh this time. 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 39 
 
 "When I'm a star, I'll find out where you are 
 and get you a swagger engagement!" 
 
 "I wonder?" 
 
 "Look here!" Her voice was sharp, and she 
 stopped short under a gas lamp. "I never for- 
 get a pal." 
 
 "I was only joking." 
 
 "Well, I wasn't. You've been a brick. I'd 
 do things for you if I ever got the chance. . . . 
 But I never shall, not at this business, anyhow!" 
 
 "Don't you think you'll ever be a star, then?" 
 
 "What, me?" 
 
 "Why shouldn't you?" 
 
 "I'd give up the stage to-morrow if I'd got 
 anything else to do. I'd never have gone on it 
 if I'd had my way. What did you take to it 
 for?" 
 
 "I love it." 
 
 "You don't?" 
 
 "Oh, I do really!" 
 
 "Well, I am astonished," she said. "I should 
 have thought you were ever so much too clever 
 for that. Whatever do you love about it? I 
 think it's a rotten business." 
 
 "It's a rotten business as one is now, but if 
 one gets on, it may be a great art." 
 
 The word "art" evidently conveyed little to 
 her mind; her voice was puzzled. ff l don't see 
 
40 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 anything in it. Of course, I'd like big money, 
 but I'd much rather get it without having to act. 
 I think acting's silly. I don't see how you can 
 be expected to laugh, and cry, and carry on in 
 a part, just as if it was all real." 
 
 "You have to feel as if it were all real while 
 you're studying the lines you have to ask your- 
 self just how you would say it all if it were some- 
 thing happening in your own life." 
 
 "Oh, my word!" she exclaimed protestingly. 
 Her attention wandered. "The shops about here 
 don't come up to the West End ones, do they? 
 They're much better than this about Netting 
 Hill." 
 
 They had dinner in a shabby little Italian place 
 half restaurant, half cake-shop where they 
 were the only customers. Soup and a fillet, both 
 very indifferent, with stale chocolate eclairs to 
 follow, seemed to her epicurean, and she pro- 
 nounced the fried potatoes "a long way better 
 than what you got with pen'orths of fried fish." 
 The gratification of her appetite, even more, the 
 novelty of being entertained, exhilarated her ex- 
 ceedingly, and she had felt a pleasurable sense 
 of unfamiliar dignity in seeing a bottle of beer 
 opened for her by a shuffling waiter. 
 
 It was past eight when Tatham wished her 
 good-night, after lending her the coppers to take 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 41 
 
 her home. The lateness of his return to Regent's 
 Park had raised expectations, and he was greeted 
 with a chorus of "Well?" A detailed account of 
 the day's doings, he thought, was likely to be ill 
 received, and he dwelt much more upon his inter- 
 view at Clapham than upon his disappointment 
 at the Sceptre. He could not, however, avoid 
 creating the impression that he had presented 
 himself at the theatre tardily, and more than 
 ever he was conscious that patience with his 
 career was moribund. This time next month, 
 would he be an actor or a clerk? Instinct pro- 
 claimed that his fate was in the unwashed hands 
 of Mr. Armytage. 
 
CHAPTER IV; 
 
 ONE of the drawing-room windows permitted 
 the anxious to view an exasperating postman for 
 nearly five minutes before he readied No. 12. 
 During the next four days Tatham spent much 
 of his time at that window. In a letter to his 
 mother he had mentioned that there was a pros- 
 pect of his going to Sweetbay, and the widow 
 had already replied, "supposing that by now the 
 engagement was settled." Experience had sup- 
 plied no grounds for her supposition, but her 
 optimism or the carelessness with which she had 
 read his letter would make it additionally dis- 
 tasteful to him to have to say he could not go. 
 And the postman had a letter for every house 
 in the terrace excepting No. 12. 
 
 Then, when Tatham wasn't watching, and 
 hadn't heard any knock at the street door, the 
 parlourmaid unconcernedly handed a bulky en- 
 velope to him. A part was inside he was en- 
 gaged! He had never seen the play; had no 
 idea whether the part was good was for the 
 present too much excited to do more than whip 
 
 42 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 43 
 
 over the pages to ascertain whether it was long 
 or short; but thanksgiving throbbed in him he 
 was engaged! 
 
 "It's come!" he announced rapturously to his 
 aunt. And to-day he looked forward to his 
 Uncle George's return from the City and the 
 question, "Any news?" 
 
 Was Miss Peggy Harper engaged too? he 
 wondered. 
 
 In an unfurnished room over a public-house, 
 where the rehearsals were conducted, it became 
 evident to him that she was not. Among the 
 dreary-faced women and disreputable-looking 
 men who mumbled and moved about the room 
 under Mr. Armytage's direction, no Miss Har- 
 per appeared. Tatham regretted her absence, 
 for in the environment in which he found him- 
 self the arrival of almost any acquaintance would 
 have been welcome. With a single exception, he 
 saw that the "artistes" around him represented 
 the lowest grade of the theatrical world, and 
 there recurred to him distressingly that sense of 
 shame which had been one of his earliest experi- 
 ences in his profession. 
 
 The exception referred to was a smartly- 
 dressed youth of about nineteen, who, by his 
 clothes and unfamiliarity with stage "business," 
 excited many humorous winks among the other 
 
A4> THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 men. He was, plainly, embarrassed and un- 
 happy, and since the premium demanded of him 
 had been paid and the cheque swiftly cashed, the 
 manager was at no pains to afford encourage- 
 ment. 
 
 "Now then, you!" he bawled, "don't you know 
 there's supposed to be a window there? Are you 
 going to walk through a third-floor window at 
 night? We want actors, not acrobats. Hi, 
 Lonsdale!" The youth, with the co-operation 
 of his sisters, had selected the name of "Vernon 
 Lonsdale." He had grown his hair long, and 
 they had pictured him in romantic situations, 
 looking like Kyrle Bellew. Just now he looked 
 like sacrificing his premium. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," he stammered; "I didn't 
 know where the window was meant to be." He 
 hurriedly advanced, and stood, with pale cheeks, 
 awaiting his next cue. 
 
 A melancholy female read indistinctly from 
 her part some lines that concluded with the word 
 "menace." She pronounced it to rhyme with 
 "grimace," and the youth, not recognising her 
 intention, remained mute. 
 
 "Go on, my boy," roared Armytage; "why 
 the hell don't you go on?" 
 
 "I haven't had my cue," said the youth resent- 
 fully. 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 45 
 
 "Show me your part," commanded Armytage. 
 'There you are, it's in your part right enough 
 
 "Oh, 'menace' ?" said the youth. 
 
 "What's that what d'ye call it, my boy? 
 'Menace"? Rats! That's extant, that's alto- 
 gether extant." He evidently relished his dis- 
 covery of "extant," which he seemed to believe 
 was a scholarly synonym for "out of date." He 
 looked round for Tatham. "Isn't 'raewace' ex- 
 tant, eh?" he inquired. 
 
 "Quite," said Tatham. His gaze met the dis- 
 comfited youth's with a twinkle. 
 
 "Of course it is," said the manager. "And 
 even if it wasn't, 'menace' is more dramatic. Go 
 on, young feller, my lad, we can't spend the day 
 here teaching you the ABC, you know!" 
 
 Tatham, recognising the school into which he 
 had fallen, sat resolved to declaim his lines in 
 the most melodramatic fashion of which he was 
 capable when his turn came ; but, even so, he was 
 not at the outset unnatural enough. Intense de- 
 jection weighed upon him as he laid intelligence 
 upon the altar of expediency. The art of acting 
 itself tottered on the pedestal of his enthusiasm, 
 and miserably he questioned whether his dignity 
 was any higher than a performer's who stuffed 
 flaming tow into his mouth in a road. 
 
46 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 Pity for young Lonsdale depressed him, too, 
 as from day to day he beheld the youth jeered 
 at and bullied. He was not a brilliant youth ; it 
 was difficult to credit him with enough capacity 
 to make his way in any walk of life ; but his nu- 
 merous suits of clothes suggested that he might 
 have squandered as much as fifty pounds to se- 
 cure a professional debut on the stage, and the 
 sum at least entitled him to civility. 
 
 "It's very different to what I thought it was 
 going to be," he complained to Tatham, in a girl- 
 ish voice ; "he was awfully polite when I saw him 
 at Clapham. And he said it was a good part. 
 I don't call it a good part, do you? There's only 
 that little pathetic bit in the third act that I take 
 any interest in." 
 
 "There isn't a good part in the piece," an- 
 swered Tatham. 
 
 "Oh, don't you think so? I think some of 
 them are all right. Only the people are so com- 
 mon; they're an awfully low lot, aren't they? 
 No, I don't call it at all a good part now, except- 
 ing for that little pathetic bit in the third act. 
 It looked all right when I read it at home, but it 
 seems so different at rehearsal I'm always be- 
 ing bundled about; when I do come to a speech, 
 somebody cuts in before I've got the last word 
 out. Don't you know what I mean?" 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 4T| 
 
 "Yes, I know very well. He cuts in to pre- 
 vent you getting any applause. That's the rea* 
 son for that." 
 
 "Oh, I say! I say, but that's awfully mean, 
 isn't it? I didn't think actors did that sort of 
 thing. I wonder it's allowed." 
 
 "It isn't allowed by people who're in a position 
 to stand up for their rights. Beginners have got 
 to grin and bear it, if the manager doesn't inter- 
 fere." 
 
 "Oh, I shouldn't like to complain! They'd be 
 so rude, wouldn't they?" 
 
 "Yes, they'd be very rude," said Tatham. 
 "I'm not complaining, either what does it mat- 
 ter, anyhow, in a thing like this? The person 
 who hasn't shaved for a week is going to spoil 
 my best scene for me; he thinks I don't know 
 enough to understand that he's trying to spoil it, 
 but I do." 
 
 "I never hear him cut you short," said Lons- 
 dale enviously. 
 
 "No, he can't break in very often, but he keeps 
 getting further behind me at every rehearsal 
 in the theatre I shall have to turn my back to 
 the audience all the time I talk to him, and that'll 
 make him look the chief figure in the scene, al- 
 though he isn't meant to be." 
 
 "Will it, really? Why should it? He must 
 
be an awfully vain brute, mustn't he? Well, one 
 thing!" he laughed gleefully; "that beast of a 
 comedian can't try the same dodge on me, with 
 my little pathetic bit in the third act, for he's got 
 to be sitting down, writing a letter, while I say 
 it." 
 
 The journey to Sweetbay was made on a Sun- 
 day morning; the heterogeneous garments that 
 they donned for travelling gave to the company 
 an appearance even more repellent than they 
 presented in the public-house. The train reached 
 the prim little watering-place at the hour when 
 many of the residents passed the station on their 
 return from church ; and as the players, burdened 
 with strange hand-luggage, straggled into their 
 midst, Tatham heard young Lonsdale panting 
 behind him. 
 
 "I say!" exclaimed the boy his face was 
 aghast "this is awful, isn't it? Why on earth 
 don't they have any cabs here?" 
 
 Tatham was execrating it, too. "I suppose 
 nobody arrives in the place on Sunday, excepting 
 us. But I can't afford cabs, myself. Where are 
 you going to stay? have you arranged any- 
 where?" 
 
 Like Tatham, the tyro had still to discover 
 apartments, and it appeared that he meant to 
 seek them on the Parade. Tatham reflected. It 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 49 
 
 did not concern him, but the lad seemed pathetic 
 in his ignorance. 
 
 "Look here," he said, "I don't want to meddle, 
 but I'm afraid you'll find it very expensive if 
 you hang out in first-class diggings on a tour like 
 this. I don't mean just the rent; I'm afraid 
 you'll find it comes very dear in other ways 
 you'll be a 'mark' for all the men in the crowd 
 to borrow money from. I expect they'll be 
 cadging from you anyhow 'pressing,' they call 
 it but if they hear of your lolling on balconies 
 on Parades, you'll be preyed upon frightfully; 
 they'll ask you for half-sovereigns." 
 
 "I say!" said Lonsdale. He put two and two 
 together. "You think they guess it's my first 
 engagement ?" 
 
 "Yes, I think they divine it," said Tatham. 
 "If you take my advice, you'll stay in the same 
 sort of lodgings as everybody else. You needn't 
 have a bedroom and parlour combined, of course, 
 but I should keep to the professional addresses, 
 if I were you." 
 
 "Thanks," said the boy. "I'm much obliged 
 to you ; it's awfully decent of you to give me the 
 tip." He sighed. "It is different to what I 
 thought it'd be. And the girls! I always 
 thought actresses were pretty why, I never saw 
 such a crew in my lifel" 
 
At this moment, among the returning congre- 
 gation, an elderly lady approached, in her Sun- 
 day costume, her eyebrows protesting against the 
 troop of vulgar travellers that profaned the 
 pavements. Tatham saw, confused, that the lady 
 was his mother. She recognised her son almost 
 at the same instant, and with pretended pleasure, 
 which ill concealed dismay, stopped short to wel- 
 come him. 
 
 "Why, Chris?" she faltered. Lonsdale pro- 
 ceeded alone, in the wake of the heavy man and 
 the low comedian, and her perturbed glance fol- 
 lowed them. "Do those people belong to your 
 company?" 
 
 "The young one's right enough," declared 
 Tatham, momentarily vain of Lonsdale. "Well, 
 how are you, mother?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm first-rate. Couldn't you have left 
 your portmanteau at the station? One never 
 sees anybody carrying luggage about on Sunday 
 in Sweetbay." 
 
 "Well, you see, a lot of the things that are in 
 it I shall want to-night. Of course, the arrival 
 isn't pleasant; it never is. We don't always get 
 in at church time, though, thank goodness! 
 Well, tell me, is the boarding-house still all 
 right? I was coming to see you this afternoon." 
 
 "Yes, do! Oh yes, there are one or two very 
 
51 
 
 smart people there. Let's move round the cor- 
 ner, Chris, we look so bad standing here! Yes, 
 we've quite nice people an army man and his 
 wife, you'll see them when you come. We play 
 bridge in the evening. Don't say what you're 
 doing here I shouldn't like them to know you're 
 on the stage. I lost fourteen-and-sixpence the 
 other week. Nearly 'broke' me!" She tittered, 
 as at an incident of a humorous nature. "Had 
 to write to the Spauldings." A titter announced 
 this to be funnier still. "Said I wanted new 
 boots. They sent me a sovereign I was saved 1" 
 The mirth fulness of the recital overwhelmed her. 
 
 He perceived, with mixed emotions, that her 
 removal had invigorated his mother, mentally at 
 least. The humiliated pensioner that he remem- 
 bered in Dalston had become accustomed to de- 
 pendence, and even callous to it. 
 
 "Perhaps somebody'll see my name on the 
 playbills," he warned her. 
 
 "Oh, I don't think so; we don't take much 
 notice of the theatre here; only rubbish comes 
 down. Anyhow, I shan't say anything about it 
 unless they ask me. Well, I mustn't wait! we 
 have luncheon at one o'clock we have luncheon 
 on Sundays, too; we dine late on Sundays, just 
 the same as any other day there! It's not at all 
 like an ordinary boarding house ; they don't take 
 
m THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 everybody, Mrs. Harrington's very particular 
 who she takes. Then you'll be round about half- 
 past four? Make yourself look as nice as you 
 can. Put on the best suit you've got, Chris. I 
 hope none of them'll see you carrying your port- 
 manteau. Wasn't there a cab in the yard? I 
 wonder you don't jump into a cab for a shilling." 
 
 A shilling! It had often been a strain on his 
 finances to buy a penny postage stamp for the 
 letter that contained his remittance to her. 
 
 He continued his way thoughtfully. The 
 current issue of Floats, seen in London, had in- 
 formed him in which streets the few theatrical 
 apartment -houses of Sweetbay were situated, and 
 when he had found a "combined room," he was 
 provided with a cut from the landlady's joint. 
 Well, after what his mother had said, it was to 
 be presumed that she would not go to see his 
 performance. He would be much relieved if 
 she didn't, yet he was hurt that she did not wish 
 to do so. As he smoked a pipe he was conscious 
 that the eagerness with which he had anticipated 
 his visit to her had subsided; and, when at half- 
 past four he paid it, he found himself increas- 
 ingly dull. 
 
 It served, however, to confirm his conjecture 
 that the lady's presence at the theatre was not 
 to be feared ; she explained that a matinee always 
 
gave her a headache, and that "of course, she 
 couldn't sit in a theatre alone at night." Besides, 
 her going would "be sure to cause a lot of talk 
 about the piece, and somebody might have the 
 curiosity to look at the cast." She thought it 
 was "much safer for her to keep away." 
 
 "Oh, and, Chris," she said, before the alleged 
 army man and his nondescript wife appeared, to 
 make painful persiflage over pale tea, "don't 
 say you're stopping here, say you're going back 
 to town this evening! See? If Mrs. Harrington 
 heard you were here for a week, she'd want to 
 know where you were staying, and I shouldn't 
 like her to know you were doing it on the cheap." 
 
 He was struggling for advancement on- a 
 squalid plane of an unpromising vocation, and 
 perhaps was a fool to have chosen it; but very 
 often he had struggled unfed that his mother 
 might receive the expected pound intact, and he 
 winced to know she was ashamed of him. 
 
 Next night he was ashamed of himself; he 
 rejoiced that she had not come to witness his 
 ignominy among these barn-stormers. Again, 
 they made him marvel. They blasphemed, in the 
 wings, at the coldness of the public, they cursed 
 the limitations of the stage, they anathematised 
 the blunders of the limelight man ; but that they 
 were figuring in a preposterous play, in a man- 
 
54t THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 ner that was devoid of talent, or intelligence, or 
 a single virtue, they were blankly and compla- 
 cently unaware. 
 
 Only young Lonsdale had adverse criticism 
 to utter upon a performance ; Tatham was alone 
 with him for a few minutes when the other men 
 had hurried to the bars. "I say," wailed the 
 debutant tears stood in his eyes "my little 
 pathetic bit in the third act! I don't see how 
 I'm ever going to make a name like this. That 
 beast of a low comedian he drank out of the 
 inkpot instead of the glass, he carried on like a 
 clown while I was speaking! That little pathetic 
 bit of mine in the third act was the only time the 
 audience laughed." 
 
 But when Saturday came, after five unprofit- 
 able nights, the greenhorn of the company was 
 the member least disturbed. Grouped on the 
 stage of the Theatre Royal, Sweetbay, the barn- 
 stormers waited for Mr. Armytage to appear 
 with their salaries. The gentleman was due at 
 noon. At a quarter to one they stood waiting 
 still, and comments had ceased. When the hour 
 struck, the faces of the crowd were blanched; 
 everybody looked much older. 
 
 Upon the matinee announced to commence at 
 2.30, the curtain did not rise. Few local play- 
 goers were disappointed. Then it was common 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 55 
 
 knowledge that Mr. Armytage had been ob- 
 served departing from Sweetbay by a very early 
 train, among the milk-churns. When he adver- 
 tised for his next band of victims, his name would 
 not be "Armytage." 
 
 Yes, the greenhorn was the member of the 
 company least disturbed, for though he had lost 
 his premium, he had lost his eagerness at any, 
 rate, to be associated with a troupe like this one ; 
 and he, alone among the "artistes," was un- 
 harassed by the problem of ways and means. 
 
 Tatham was stunned by it. From his mother, 
 who had visited him surreptitiously, perturbed 
 lest Mrs. Harrington and the army man should 
 "ever wonder what she was doing down this end 
 of the town," assistance was impossible. His 
 only course was to beg a loan of Lonsdale or to 
 write to the Spauldings. The remembrance of 
 his warning to Lonsdale, as much as the doubt 
 how the sum would be repayable, nerved him to 
 appeal to his aunt. 
 
 He lacked the amount of his bill and his fare 
 to London and a postal order duly reached him. 
 But w r hen he had slunk back to No. 12, where 
 the extra bed had been restored to his cousin 
 Harold's room, Uncle George's proclamation on 
 the hearthrug, after dinner, caused him no aston- 
 ishment. 
 
56 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "You must see for yourself that this won't 
 work, my boy," said Spaulding definitely; "y u 'U 
 have to give the stage up. You must try to take 
 an interest in something else you'll have to be 
 satisfied with a berth. I'll do what I can for you, 
 and you'll be able to manage better if you and 
 your mother go into lodgings together; there's 
 no reason for her to remain at Sweetbay. You 
 can take three rooms together somewhere in a 
 cheap neighbourhood, and you'll both of you be 
 much more comfortable that way. You'd better 
 come into the City with me to-morrow morn- 
 ing." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WHEN the dull confusion had cleared from his 
 mind, when the place where he sat had begun to 
 be a familiar place, and he knew, without raising 
 his eyes, that five letter-files fell awry to the left 
 of the mantelpiece, and just what section of a 
 wall and a water-pipe was visible across the 
 glossy red backs of the three bulky account-books 
 that flanked the copying-press, Tatham was sur- 
 prised to perceive that the intimidating clerks 
 under the green shades around him were becom- 
 ing no less human than actors. Like the actors 
 that he had deserted, they performed their duties 
 without zest and without expectation. The 
 dream in which some of them had once indulged 
 of being summoned to the chief's presence to 
 receive compliments and a prominent position 
 already looked as fantastic to their minds as the 
 dream of playing Hamlet before Royalty looked 
 to the disillusioned actor evading his washer- 
 woman in Bacup. Just as all the interests of the 
 actors had lain outside the theatre, so all the 
 interests of the clerks lay outside the office. Ad- 
 
 57 
 
58 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 mitting him by 3egrees to confidences some- 
 what tardily, because he was the "boss's nephew" 
 the erstwhile intimidating business men talked 
 of music-halls. Eventually they were more con- 
 fidential than he, for when their conversation 
 turned upon the play, he did not since it would 
 have rendered the sense of failure still more 
 poignant to him acknowledge that he had been 
 on the stage. He listened to their criticisms pen- 
 sively, and accepted their mistakes without re- 
 monstrance. Not even the strange assertions of 
 the accountant, a confirmed playgoer, who by 
 reason of his age erred dogmatically, provoked 
 him to correction. 
 
 The proposal that she should return to Lon- 
 don had not appealed to Mrs. Tatham. She had 
 been forced to submit herself to second-class 
 London lodgings during the last two or three 
 years of her husband's life, and she shrank from 
 renewing the experience. Her reply that ill 
 health made the plan very undesirable, of course 
 disposed of the suggestion. Her son was in- 
 stalled in a top bedroom in Doughty Street, and 
 lived alone on the half of a larger salary than his 
 clerical capacities would have gained for him 
 from any stranger. By dint of an indefatigable 
 quest for the cheapest City chop-houses and an 
 avoidance of pudding, he sometimes had a half- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 59* 
 
 crown remaining for the pit of a theatre on Sat- 
 urday night. Not often. But there were gal- 
 leries at a shilling. And his most frequent weak- 
 ness cost him, in cash, nothing at all. He went 
 in the evening to walk in the Strand. 
 
 Formerly he had loathed the Strand; had 
 paced it despairingly and felt that never, so long 
 as he lived, would he be able even to drive through 
 it without resentment. Yet now the street of 
 memories was not without a tender grace, not 
 without a sentimental appeal. Once or twice, 
 craving to see it again in its most intimate as- 
 pect, he lunched rapidly on a sandwich and con- 
 trived a breathless visit to the Strand during the 
 luncheon hour. Luck was against him. Though 
 he saw many actors, he saw none whom he knew. 
 But it was an emotional promenade, notwith- 
 standing, that saunter from the Gaiety, where 
 he jumped off the bus, to Charing Cross post 
 office, where he turned back wide-eyed. He re- 
 entered clerkdom guiltily a man with a secret, 
 a clerk who led a double life. When six months 
 had worn away, his gloom held but a single gleam 
 of comfort the reflection that, distasteful as he 
 found the work, he had never scamped it, never 
 reached his place late nor left it too soon the 
 comfort of reflecting that his uncle must report 
 upon him warmly. Recognising the salary to be 
 
generous, though inadequate, he was proud to 
 have deserved the satisfaction. What his uncle 
 actually reported was that "Christopher did just 
 what he was set to do, but had no initiative, and 
 would never be worth more than he was getting." 
 
 Nearly a year had passed when Tatham at last 
 happened to meet someone associated with the 
 "dear dead days beyond recall," and then it was 
 not in the Strand, and it was not anyone whom 
 he had known well. On a Saturday afternoon, 
 in Long Acre, he saw Miss Peggy Harper 
 approaching. 
 
 "Hallo, hallo, hallo!" she said, stopping to 
 greet him. For the moment she couldn't recall 
 his name, but she put out her hand genially 
 enough, and they stood smiling at each other. 
 
 "How d'ye do?" said Tatham constrainedly. 
 To speak to a girl was such an unusual experi- 
 ence now that he felt shy. 
 
 "And what have you been doing with your- 
 self?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm all right," he said. . . . "You know 
 that tour came to grief? One week, and nobody 
 got his money." 
 
 "What tour?" she said vaguely. "Oh, oh yes 4 
 I remember! Well, what's the best news? Are 
 you doing anything?" 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 61 
 
 "I I've given it up. I'm not on the stage 
 any more." 
 
 "Aren't you? Well, good judge too! You 
 can't tell me of anything, then? I thought per- 
 haps you might have told me of a nice vacancy." 
 She laughed. 
 
 "I wish I could. Have you been out of an 
 engagement long?" 
 
 "No; I'm only just back from tour. I'm all 
 on my own now. Mother's playing in Australia. 
 I'm in diggings with another girl. I say! have 
 you seen Adas No Chicken?" 
 
 He shook his head. "I don't go to the theatre 
 very often. I can't get seats for nothing now 
 I've left the profession." 
 
 "What rot! Who's to know you've left it? 
 you could write and enclose one of your old 
 cards." 
 
 "Oh, I can't do that," he said. 
 
 "Well, I've got a couple of stalls in my pocket 
 for the matinee this afternoon. The girl I'm 
 living with has got an appointment and can't 
 go with me. If you've nothing to do, you might 
 come." 
 
 "Oh, thanks; I'd like it immensely," said Tat- 
 ham. 'What time does it begin?" 
 
 "I'm going there now. Come along, then, or 
 we shall be late." 
 
62 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 He wished he had put on his other coat; but 
 it was delightful, nevertheless, to sit in a stall 
 again and talk to an actress. Almost he forgot 
 in moments that he was to-day a clerk. And 
 although a sixpenny programme and the tea 
 when they came out were items of importance, 
 a florin wasn't much as the price of a trip to an- 
 other planet. 
 
 She gave him her address before they parted, 
 and with alacrity he accepted her invitation to 
 "come in and see them one of these days." All' 
 the week he found himself looking forward to the 
 visit. The fear that on Saturday she was likely 
 to be at another matinee determined him to wait 
 till Sunday, and he rose on Sunday with an 
 eagerness ludicrously disproportionate to the oc- 
 casion. A new zest was in his mood, a new in- 
 terest coloured his outlook a zest and an inter- 
 est which the girl would have been incapable of 
 inspiring in him twelve months before, when the 
 realm that she represented had been his own realm 
 
 She was lodging over a little shop that de- 
 scribed itself as "Dairy and Refreshment 
 Rooms," in Great Queen Street. The shutters 
 were up this afternoon, and he saw no private 
 door; but after he had rung twice, the shop- 
 
JTHE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 63 
 
 door was opened and he was instructed to "Come 
 through, please." 
 
 "Second floor," said the woman. "Will you 
 go up." 
 
 A glimpse he had of milk-cans, and of stale 
 cakes under glass covers. He mounted a nar- 
 row staircase, to knock timidly. 
 
 "Come in! Oh, it's you!" 
 
 Pleasure was in her voice. The tiny room was 
 lit only by firelight. When she had exclaimed 
 that she was "jolly glad he had remembered, 
 and that he was to take his overcoat off and put 
 it down anywhere," he sat by the fire, opposite 
 her, and thought how much cosier it was than 
 his top bedroom. 
 
 "Naomi will be down in a minute/' she said; 
 "she's changing her frock. As soon as she comes 
 you shall have some tea." 
 
 "Is 'Naomi' the girl you're living with?" 
 
 "Yes, of course it is; did you think it was a 
 servant? Naomi Knight. She talks like you 
 you ought to get on." 
 
 "Talks like me?" 
 
 "I mean she's awfully serious about it all." 
 
 "Oh, as I used to talk?" 
 
 "Oh yes, of course I forgot you weren't in 
 the profession now. What are you doing, then?" 
 
 "I told you. I'm in the City." 
 
"Did you? I don't remember," she said. "Do 
 you mean you're in a clerkship? I say! it must 
 be rather a change, isn't it?" 
 
 Acutely he was conscious that the moment 
 would be beautiful if she were indeed interested 
 to hear what a change it was if he could make 
 confidences to an actress in the firelight and find 
 her sympathetic. But Peggy Harper chattered 
 on before he could make any answer at all. 
 "What do you think of our rooms? Rotten, 
 aren't they? But we're so close to everything 
 look at the time it saves. Where are you living?" 
 Again she omitted to wait for his reply. "When 
 mother settled the Australian engagement, I 
 made up my mind to live near the Strand. No 
 more suburbs for me; I'd rather have the pokiest 
 little place about here than the best diggings in 
 [Netting Hill or Brixton that ever were half 
 your day's spent in going backwards and for- 
 wards. And look at the fares, how they mount 
 up! I think this is a jolly good pitch. Of 
 course, our food wants watching, but so it does 
 wherever you go. Does your landlady take your 
 things? Everybody says the professional land- 
 ladies steal less than the others. Have you found 
 that? Does your landlady let to the profession? 
 I say, it's a funny thing, if anyone steals a 
 ha'porth of bread from a shop once in her life 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 65 
 
 because she's starving she gets sent to prison, 
 but nearly every landlady steals bread and meat 
 and groceries all the year round as a matter of 
 course and you mustn't even complain of it 
 openly, or she blackguards you, besides." 
 
 It was something of a disappointment to find 
 that Miss Xaomi Knight was neither very young 
 nor very good-looking. She was revealed as a 
 thin, dark woman who seemed at first to possess 
 no other attraction than a pleasant voice. It was 
 not until he had helped to take the cups and 
 saucers from the cupboard and to clear a good 
 deofl of litter from the only table that she uttered 
 anything but trivialities. Then, of course, the 
 talk reverted from the teapot to the stage, and 
 she told him what character she had played last 
 and what she thought of it. He found her ideas 
 on the subject for he knew the piece very in- 
 teresting. 
 
 "I said you two 'd get on," cried Peggy. "I 
 shock her frightfully. I don't know how she puts 
 up with me." 
 
 "Don't be so silly," said Miss Knight. "She 
 won't work, Mr. Tatham, that's what's the mat- 
 ter with this girl." 
 
 "I'm not going to give myself the hump over 
 Shakespeare, and Ibsen, and things like that. 
 
66 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 What's the good? I shall never play 'em! Be- 
 sides, I don't understand what they mean." 
 
 Miss Knight smiled indulgently. "Some 
 women who do play them don't read them," she 
 said. "I was in a company with a woman once 
 who told me she had played in three Shakespear- 
 ean seasons and never read one of the plays in 
 her life she had only read her own lines." 
 
 "Do you believe it?" asked Tatham. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "I quite believe it ; I'm sure it 
 was true. The most extraordinary people go on 
 the stage. They haven't any gift for it, and they 
 aren't even earnest about it. I can't make out 
 how they expect to do any good." 
 
 "Hark at her rubbing it into me!" laughed 
 Peggy. 
 
 "I wasn't thinking about you at all; you're 
 only a child yet." 
 
 "Child yourself! I shall get up and smack 
 you if you aren't careful. Child, indeed!" She 
 appealed gaily to Tatham. "Don't you think 
 I'm grown up?" 
 
 "I think you're very nice," he said diffidently. 
 
 "There you are? So I am. So are you! I 
 say, do you know this boy lost a shop through 
 me a hundred years ago? That was how we 
 met. 'Do let me go in next!' I said. Like 
 that the pathetic heroine. 'With pleasure,' he 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 67 
 
 said. Talk about manners, he was a regular 
 Lord Burleigh." 
 
 "Chesterfield's the gentleman you're thinking 
 of, ducky." 
 
 "Oh, well, what's the odds, it's all the same. 
 And then he popped his watch for me. I say, 
 did you ever get it out? Let's see if you've got 
 your watch on I" 
 
 He had got it on at last, but he turned very 
 red, and Miss Knight interposed hastily: 
 
 "Don't take any notice of her; she wants a 
 good shaking. Where were you both in Lon- 
 don? Are you playing anywhere now?" 
 
 "I've given it up," he said again; "I'm not an 
 actor.* 
 
 "Oh, really? Didn't you care for it?" 
 
 "Yes, very much." 
 
 "But that's awfully hard lines on you." She 
 was attentive, grieved; her attitude invited him 
 to say more. 
 
 "It was rather a facer. I'm in a clerkship 
 I had to do something, and engagements were too 
 difficult to find." 
 
 "But that's cruel!" 
 
 "Isn't it beastly rough on him?" exclaimed 
 Peggy brightly, who hadn't thought so till she 
 was told. "And I'm sure he was clever. Weren't 
 you?" 
 
(68 THE PQSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "I wasn't clever enough to get on." 
 
 "Oh, but you're so young," said Miss Knight. 
 "I think it's dreadfully hard lines on you; I do 
 really. And do you have to go to the City every 
 day?" She seemed to hope that he had found a 
 clerkship in which he was needed only once a 
 week. 
 
 "Saturday's a half -holiday; Sunday's a red- 
 letter day this Sunday. I haven't even come 
 across anyone in the profession till I met Miss 
 Harper." 
 
 "I do think this poor boy's to be pitied," de- 
 clared Peggy. Her sympathy, though late, was 
 pleasant. "Don't you think it's very brave of 
 him, Naomi?" She went a step too far and made 
 him feel ridiculous. 
 
 "Won't you tell me more about yourself, Miss 
 Knight? What are you reading now?" 
 
 She was reading a novel, and a good one suf- 
 ficiently good for him to be surprised to learn 
 that she had heard of it. She talked of it very 
 intelligently. It was easy to see that the study 
 of character fascinated her her interest in it 
 was not a pose and Tatham began to feel that 
 although she had made no position in the theatre 
 yet, he was listening to a woman who was des- 
 tined to be heard of by-and-by. Excepting Elsie 
 Lane, he had known no other actress who im- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 69 
 
 pressed him with this conviction, and he could 
 not help reflecting that Peggy Harper was right 
 in saying that they were very dissimilar com- 
 panions. 
 
 Yet, because Peggy was young, and might 
 in moments be called pretty, it was Peggy who 
 lent enchantment to the parlour over the dairy 
 and refreshment rooms on Sundays now. If 
 Miss Knight sometimes said things that came 
 back to him when he had gone, it was Peggy 
 who drew his gaze oftener when he was there. 
 And her chatter had a charm for him too, for 
 was it not always professional! Indeed, it took 
 him much nearer to the wings than Miss Knight's 
 analyses of Shakespeare's heroines. The chance 
 of getting "shopped" in some obscure company, 
 Naomi's prospect of settling for a part, through 
 Albemarle, the disappointments met with these 
 topics exercised a fascination over a young man, 
 who, stage-struck from his boyhood, had been 
 compelled to relinquish the stage. Even the 
 slang that she used made the past glow again. 
 If she had been a dressmaker's assistant, or a 
 waitress, her interest would have been slight, but 
 the theatre transmuted her. To him she repre- 
 sented the theatre. He hated the City, and she 
 was the ray of limelight in his life. 
 
 "Don't you think he's mashed on you, Peggy?" 
 
70 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 said Miss Knight one day when they sat talking 
 about him. 
 
 "What rot!" said Peggy, with a conscious 
 smile. 
 
 "You hum! You know very well he is." 
 
 "Well, what of it anyhow?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing!" 
 
 And that was the girl's view too. He was 
 "mashed on her." It meant to her simply the 
 gratification of having made a conquest. 
 Whether he would tell her that he was "mashed," 
 even whether she liked him enough to wish him 
 to do so, were matters to which she gave no 
 thought. Why should she, why "worry to think," 
 since he was too hard up to marry for ever so 
 long? Sufficient for the day was the admiration 
 thereof and it was the first time that she had 
 found an admirer who was a gentleman. 
 
 That he was a gentleman was as forcefully 
 Tatham's attraction to the girl as the fact of 
 her being an actress was her attraction to him. 
 Just as the man knew, when he was willing to 
 remember it, that she was vapid and vulgar, so 
 the girl knew at the back of her little hen's brain 
 that his conversation was much less congenial 
 to her than the banter of the young men with 
 whom she was accustomed to joke. But he was 
 a gentleman! She had no doubt on the point 
 
.THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 71 
 
 she had not needed Naomi's confirmation; un- 
 erringly she could distinguish, as girls on even 
 a lower social stratum can unerringly distinguish, 
 between gentlemen and the gentlemanly, and to 
 have captivated him flattered her much. It flat- 
 tered her so much that, even if he had attempted 
 to improve her mind, she would have cheerfully 
 submitted for a time. 
 
 Soon his visits were not limited to Sundays; 
 often he sat by the fire in Great Queen Street 
 on Saturdays too. The Era was published on 
 Saturday, and if he took in a copy of a paper 
 that she could not afford to buy she was frankly 
 and joyously appreciative. It wasn't, "Thanks, 
 that's very kind of you, I haven't seen it yet;" 
 it was, "You are a brick! I say, it is good of 
 you! ive can't run to sixpenny papers." She 
 pretended to surplus silver no more than to his- 
 trionic enthusiasm from motives of self-aggran- 
 disement she pretended nothing, she was spon- 
 taneity personified. She was spontaneity per- 
 sonified one Saturday when he arrived to be 
 greeted with the news that her friend had just 
 found an engagement. 
 
 "Here, you're just in time ; come and congratu- 
 late her!" she cried. "This girl has struck it 
 rich. She has! She's going to play 'Mrs. Joce- 
 lyn' in Mabel, Go and Put On Your Hat'* 
 
72 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Oh, I'm awfully glad!" exclaimed Tatham, 
 for it was an excellent part in a very successful 
 West End comedy by a brilliant writer. 
 
 "Isn't it jolly?" said Miss Knight. "I'm ever 
 so pleased about it ; it was only decided this morn- 
 ing. And I shan't have to give up these rooms 
 at the start that's another good thing, for it's 
 for an eight weeks' tour of the suburbs." 
 
 "And afterwards?" 
 
 "Afterwards we go into the provinces, per- 
 haps. That isn't sure yet." 
 
 "You'll be left here alone if she goes away?" 
 he said, turning to Peggy. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know what I shall do if she goes 
 away I couldn't manage to keep on all this by 
 myself; I'd have to put up with a combined room 
 if I was still in town. But there's lots of time 
 to worry about that, I may be in the provinces 
 too before then. I say, I do think it's ripping, 
 her getting such a swagger part!" She was as 
 genuinely elated as if she herself had been for- 
 tunate. 
 
 "I hope you don't go into the provinces too," 
 he said. "What'd become of me? It's very selfish 
 of you to think of such a thing the least you 
 can do is to stand out for a London engage- 
 ment!" 
 
 "Yes, likely! What price mother? You'd 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 73 
 
 better drop her a postcard, tell her she's to go 
 on sending me money every week till I'm offered 
 leading business up West. I see mother's face! 
 How many changes have you got, Naomi? have 
 you got to find your own frocks?" 
 
 "Yes; but I've got all I want, except the black 
 I can make my evening frock pass for clean if 
 I cover it up with chiffon. You've seen the piece, 
 Mr. Tatham, haven't you? What did you think 
 of the way Miss Stevens played the scene in the 
 third act? Do you remember?" 
 
 "I thought she was very good. Didn't you?" 
 
 "Y-e-s, I thought she might have done rather 
 more. I didn't think she brought out quite all 
 there was in it ; she didn't seem to me to go quite 
 deep enough." 
 
 "I suppose you'll have to copy her?" he asked. 
 "It must be rather rough, the way all the people 
 have to copy the performances of the London 
 company, whether they want to or not?" 
 
 fe l shan't not altogether. I may have to do 
 it at the rehearsals, but I shall give my own read- 
 ing of the part at night." 
 
 "Hear, hear!" said Peggy. "Don't you be 
 sat on, old girl! I say, this wants celebrating. 
 Hold on a minute, both of you! I shan't pay, 
 I shall tell her to stick it on the bill." She darted 
 out of the room, and reappeared two minutes 
 
74 JTHE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 later with bottles from the shop. "It's teetotal 
 I can't help that, she hasn't got a licence !" she 
 announced to Tatham. "You'll find tumblers 
 in the cupboard don't upset the cruet, it's 
 rocky." 
 
 "There are only two there," said Naomi 
 [Knight; "I took up the other for our teeth." 
 
 "Bring me a cup, thenl" 
 
 "No, I'll have the cup," said Tatham. 
 
 "Give it to me!" She struggled with him sin- 
 cerely, and was victorious. "Here's to Naomi!" 
 
 "Miss Naomi Knight!" 
 
 "Here's to everybody!" laughed she. 
 
 And then, the importance of the part again, 
 the name of the suburb they were to "open" in, 
 the absorbing question of the "chiffon," whether, 
 after all, chiffon would conceal the shabbiness so 
 well as lace. When he sat in the top bedroom 
 that evening, in an armchair with a broken spring, 
 blowing smoke musingly, Tatham wondered how 
 the bohemian scene would look on the stage if a 
 playwright reproduced it there, wondered if 
 there would be any atmosphere in it behind the 
 footlights two girls, and a young man, all 
 more or less penniless, drinking toasts to the fu- 
 ture in ginger ale "stuck upon the bill." A com- 
 edy, of course, and the younger hostess, Peggy, 
 would be the heroine. The young man, presum- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 75 
 
 ably, would be the hero one would have to make 
 him something more interesting than a cleik at 
 a hop merchant's. A rich man's son, estranged 
 from his family and forgiven later? Nothing 
 very original about that. Still the hero must 
 marry her at the end he would have to get the 
 money somehow ! Earn it? Y-e-s. What at? 
 
 Frowning, smiling, with no definite purpose, 
 he pondered the fancy that had come to him be- 
 gan to discern the dim outline of a plot in it; 
 became all at once unpractical and was a popular 
 dramatist, dizzy with triumph; dropped from 
 Olympus, with a bump, on to the incipient plot 
 and found that it wouldn't do at all. He aban- 
 doned the matter. Ridiculous daydream! He 
 resolved to think of something else and discov- 
 ered that the comedy was insistent. He jumped 
 up and thrust a chair to the rickety table, and 
 slowly, laboriously proceeded to examine his 
 fancy with pen and ink. 
 
 So he took his first step to authorship. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 NOT the next incident in his acquaintance witH 
 Peggy Harper, but the next incident that always 
 remained in his memory, was his travelling be- 
 side her in a tram, full of dripping umbrellas, 
 and sitting beside her in a suburban dress circle. 
 Naomi Knight had obtained a pass for them. 
 
 He had anticipated the evening with consid- 
 erable eagerness. At every visit that he had paid 
 during three weeks he had listened to accounts 
 of the rehearsals, heard discussions about her 
 dresses more than all, had been saturated in her 
 views of her part. The intensity with which she 
 had expatiated upon subtle points in it recurred 
 to him painfully as he sat in the dress circle and 
 found her to be entirely commonplace. The 
 woman whose dramatic intelligence was so acute 
 in the parlour, displayed not the least touch of 
 inspiration on the stage. She was mediocrity it- 
 self. He had a suspicion that Peggy did not 
 think much of her either, although they both ap- 
 plauded loudly. 
 
 The journey back was embarrassing to him. 
 
 76 
 
They all returned together; and the actress's un- 
 consciousness of having failed to fulfil her con- 
 ception of the character, her unconsciousness of 
 how piteously far her executive powers fell short 
 of her ideas, made answers to her questions ex- 
 tremely difficult. It was evident, however, that 
 the halting falsehoods which he found himself 
 uttering sounded sincere to her. Again she 
 talked raptly of her reasons for delivering cer- 
 tain lines in a certain way, and the exposition was 
 admirable the exposition of an artist ; she knew 
 as much about the meaning of the part as the 
 man who had written it. With bewilderment 
 Tatham remembered that the lines when she 
 spoke them had made no impression on him what- 
 ever that the intellect that she had brought to 
 bear upon them would have been suspected by 
 no one because she couldn't act. It was the 
 truth. She couldn't act. But the fact amazed 
 him. 
 
 He would have avoided going in with them 
 when Great Queen Street was reached, but his 
 excuses were overridden. There was a pork pie 
 for supper, large enough for three appetites, and 
 the quantity of beer in the jug showed that his 
 presence at supper had been expected. Well, 
 all the questions had been asked by this time. 
 The party was pleasant enough. The fatigue 
 
78 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 to which Miss Knight had acknowledged in the 
 tram disappeared at the table; it gave place to 
 high spirits, the hilarity of a woman exhilarated 
 by success. He had never seen her so animated 
 before. The merriment of illusory triumph 
 pealed, and was infectious; by degrees he re- 
 sponded to it, was as talkative as his hostesses. 
 He began to see that Peggy had by now come 
 to feel what she wished to believe ; he even ceased 
 to remember that he had been deeply disap- 
 pointed himself. After all, a first performance 
 was nervous work ! It was a scene of light-heart- 
 edness, endearments, and self-deception, a scene 
 eminently typical of the world in which it took 
 place. 
 
 When Peggy went downstairs to let him out, 
 one o'clock had struck. The staircase and the 
 little shop were quite dark; but for the candle 
 that she carried, he would have been unable to 
 see the way. The responsibility of bolts and 
 chain had been entrusted to her by the house- 
 holder, and at her bidding he held the candle 
 while she fumbled with them. She appeared to 
 find the task of unfastening the door a compli- 
 cated one, and for an instant her cheek was so 
 close to his face that all his self-control was nec- 
 essary. As he strode up the wet street, he kept 
 questioning whether she had given him any credil 
 
POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 79 
 
 for the self-control, or thought him merely 
 stupid. 
 
 The girl shot the holts moodily. At least half 
 an hour ago she had decided that he should kiss 
 her when they went downstairs, and the failure 
 of her plan depressed her. Yet she did not think 
 him "stupid"; she reflected again that he was a 
 "perfect gentleman." From his superior point 
 of view, she realised, kissing her would mean a 
 declaration he couldn't go on coming here and 
 kissing her and never ask her to be engaged to 
 him. Lots of fellows would, of course all the 
 boys that she knew just as often as she'd let 
 them, but not Tatham. He wasn't their class. 
 Still, it had been an awful sell! In one way it 
 was a pity a gentleman was so particular, for 
 she really was not certain that she wanted to 
 marry him if he did ask her. She wanted him to 
 kiss her, however she hadn't any doubt about 
 that. Her face was glum when she went back 
 to the room. 
 
 "You haven't been very quick about it?" said 
 Naomi Knight, facetiously inquiring. 
 
 "Oh, rats!" she snapped. 
 Sorry I asked, my pet!" 
 
 "I don't know what you mean," said the girl 
 tartly. 
 
60 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Nothing to lose your temper about, then, is 
 there?" 
 
 "I'm not losing my temper at all. I suppose 
 I can go downstairs to see a pal off without being 
 badgered, can't I ? Funny ideas you must have, 
 I'm sure!" 
 
 Naomi Knight yawned. "I think it's time we 
 went to bed. I don't know what's the matter 
 with you all of a sudden." 
 
 "Oh, there's nothing the matter with me," she 
 exclaimed. "I'm tired, that's all. I want a cig. 
 \Vhere are they?" She found the remainder of 
 a packet of cheap cigarettes on the mantelpiece, 
 and puffed one violently. "Oh, Naomi, I am 
 such a fool; I've never been silly about anyone 
 else I think it's because he's so shy." 
 
 Out of her knowledge, the woman laughed 
 shortly. "And they fancy we girls are so differ- 
 ent from themselves !" 
 
 "What's that got to do with it? D'ye think 
 he'll ever say anything?" 
 
 "Yes. What are you going to do if he does? 
 You can't marry I don't suppose he gets thirty 
 bob a week." 
 
 "He's in his uncle's office; surely to goodness 
 he gets more than that? Besides ... I don't 
 know. I don't know what I want, that's a fact. 
 I've got the hump." 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 81 
 
 "What you want is a jolly long tour; you'd 
 be all right if you didn't see him for a few 
 months." 
 
 "Don't you think I like him?" 
 
 "I don't think you're in love with him; you 
 don't care about him really. And if you did, 
 it wouldn't be important at eighteen. Oh, my 
 dear, when one looks back! . . . What does it 
 amount to afterwards? one can't remember what 
 colour his hair was. Time's rotten, Peg. Time's 
 a beast. There was a fellow Oh, well!" 
 
 "He's writing a play," said Peggy rumina- 
 tively. 
 
 "Writing a play? Is he?" 
 
 "Of course he hasn't much time, only the even- 
 ings. Still Authors do make money, don't 
 
 they?" 
 
 "Some of them do. What sort of play is it?" 
 
 "A comedy. I I don't see much in it myself 
 what he told me. It's about the profession. 
 Who cares about that? The people talk much 
 the same as they do in real life; that's his idea, 
 he wants to be as much like real life as he can. 
 Who cares about real life? And the trouble the 
 plot's giving him! Of course, he must do as he 
 likes, but if I was an author, I'd write costume 
 pieces about bygone times you don't need to 
 worry about the plot then, any old thing'll do if 
 
82 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 the people are dressed up quamt and talk old- 
 fashioned. I daresay some costume pieces are 
 all right, but look at most of 'em my word, the 
 public had got sick of those silly old plots before 
 mother was born! They wouldn't run a night 
 if it wasn't for the clothes and 'prithees/ ' 
 
 "I do protest the clothes are monstrous pleas- 
 ing," smiled Miss Knight. "I'd like to read Tat- 
 ham's piece. Has he shown you any of it ? Ask 
 him to lend you the first act if it's finished." 
 
 It was then far from being finished ; but when 
 he came again and Peggy said, "I say, I should 
 like to read your first act when it's done," the 
 invitation was not one that he was likely to for- 
 get. 
 
 So, nervously and proudly, a few weeks later 
 he left Act I in her hands for perusal, and spent 
 all the evening picturing her absorbed by it and 
 wondering if he would receive a letter from her 
 by the first post in the morning; and since an 
 account for typewriting was an impossible in- 
 dulgence before the act received revision, his stack 
 of neat manuscript had been a forbidding object 
 to her when she thanked him. 
 
 Naomi Knight found it crumpled behind the 
 sofa cushion next day, where Peggy had forgot- 
 ten it, after a valiant but vain attempt which 
 petered out at the seventeenth page. She did not 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 88 
 
 own that she had forgotten it; still less would 
 the sentimentality to which she had acknowledged 
 allow her to admit that she had not read it. Her 
 statement that she had "read it yesterday" and 
 her subsequent pretence of finding the other's 
 opinions of it in agreement with her own was 
 perhaps her earliest affectation. 
 
 That her friend happened to be a better critic 
 than an actress was fortunate for Peggy her 
 Cockney shrewdness took full advantage of the 
 fact. Though she did not deceive the woman 
 for an instant, she deceived the young man con- 
 tinuously. In moments she deceived herself. She 
 was enabled to discuss his w r ork with an assur- 
 ance that compensated to him for that appalling 
 week during which he had waited, sick with sus- 
 pense, for a letter that never came. She was at 
 this period a companion to him, and he found 
 nothing remarkable in the circumstances that her 
 objections coincided with Naomi Knight's it 
 was to be expected that Miss Knight would in- 
 fluence her. Thanks to Miss Knight, she had oc- 
 casional hints to offer; and again it was by no 
 means astonishing that Miss Knight proved to 
 be of the same mind with regard to them. If 
 the tour of Mabel, Go and Put On Your Hat 
 had been extended to the country, Peggy would 
 have been severely embarrassed in her role of 
 
84 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 dramatic adviser, but it finished at Fulham ; and 
 the chief thing that daunted her now was the 
 alarming length of her involuntary vacation. 
 "Mother's" letter had drawn tears once, when 
 he entered. 
 
 " 'Tisn't as if she didn't understand 1" she 
 quavered. "She's heen out often enough herself; 
 she ought to know it isn't my fault. Great Scott! 
 when I was with Morgan, in panto, she wouldn't 
 have had a cent if it hadn't been for me. I paid 
 all exes right through the season, and took out 
 the muff and chain she'd pawned, too. She's got 
 no right to talk as she does." 
 
 "Oh, well, don't cry," he said, moved; "you'll 
 find something soon." 
 
 "I'm not crying. I don't care. She can say 
 what she jolly well likes. Talk about mothers! 
 
 it's no thanks to her I'm Oh, well, I know 
 
 her! she's got out of bed the wrong side, she 
 wrote on one of her days. Next mail I'll get a 
 long letter calling me 'Lovey.' I'll 'lovey' her. 
 . . . She drove father silly! Father was a gen- 
 tleman. He was father was never in the pro- 
 fession till he married, he only went into it after- 
 wards, lie and mother used to run their own 
 companies when I was a kid. I can remember 
 father he always wore spats. I don't know 
 what's going to become of me ! I've had to drop 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 85 
 
 my ads in The Stage because I couldn't keep on 
 paying the bob." 
 
 "I can find a bob every week," he said. 
 
 "Yes, it'd be all right, wouldn't it you having 
 to give it up yourself and paying for my ads 
 afterwards." 
 
 "Advertising was no use to me anyhow my 
 name didn't say anything to managers when they 
 saw it." 
 
 "I don't know that it's much use to me, if it 
 comes to that. Still, I always do advertise when 
 I've got the money to spare; there's just the 
 chance of your name being seen by someone who's 
 got a vacancy and knows what you can do." 
 
 She consented to write the advertisement pres- 
 ently; and he left it, with a shilling, at The Stage 
 office on his way back to the rickety table. The 
 table wobbled under his hand into the small hours 
 now persistently escaping from the wads of 
 paper that he placed beneath its legs and his 
 landlady made an extra charge in the bills for 
 his unconscionable demands upon the gas. Often 
 he took his way to the City sleepily, and it seemed 
 anomalous, now that he grudged each hour there 
 as an encroachment upon precious time, that he 
 was able to fulfil a clerk's duties with a lighter 
 heart. But lighter it was. With the private in- 
 terest, the new hope to sustain him, he felt more 
 
86 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 cheerful in the City than he had felt since his 
 initiation. The day might be as gloomy, but 
 the prospect had brightened. There was, in mo- 
 ments, something not unfriendly in the glimpse 
 of the wall and the water-pipe across the red 
 backs of the account books it was a transparent 
 wall that revealed a future. If the prettiest lines 
 of the dialogue that he had accomplished in the 
 bedroom overnight often intruded next morn- 
 ing w T hen he was perched, casting figures, in the 
 office, their clandestine visit was not without a 
 charm the office was no sadder for their caress. 
 And his additions weren't much the slower for it. 
 What Tatham needed pressingly, and had 
 needed pressingly from the moment of his re- 
 luctant introduction to hops, was a man's com- 
 panionship. He was alone. And just as he had 
 exaggerated Peggy in the dreariness of solitude, 
 he exaggerated her now in the eagerness of am- 
 bition. Her charm was no longer the mere ray 
 of limelight that she shed authorship had in- 
 creased, not diminished, his need of companion- 
 ship. There were hours less the hours of diffi- 
 culty than the effervescent hours of difficulties 
 surmounted when the society of a man who had 
 the interest to listen and the ability to respond 
 would have been a boon beyond price. A plain 
 young woman, called Naomi Knight, could have 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 87 
 
 supplied all that lie in truth sought in Peggy, 
 and have supplied it honestly. But Peggy and 
 she were "pals" in their vernacular so she 
 supplied no more than echoes. And there was 
 another late evening when the dairy and re- 
 freshment rooms slumbered when he left. 
 
 As it happened, they had not been talking 
 much of his comedy that evening they had been 
 talking of the letters from Peggy's mother; for 
 some little time all of them had been written on 
 the lady's "days" apparently. The girl's eyes 
 were red; she said nothing as she tiptoed down 
 the stairs. In the parlour, only Naomi's presence 
 had prevented a demonstration of his sympathy; 
 in the darkness of the shop he paused, and turned. 
 
 "Do buck up, little girl!" he begged, under 
 his breath. "I hate leaving you like this." 
 
 "I'm all right," she muttered. 
 
 "I wish I could lend you the money, so that 
 you needn't take any from her. You know I 
 haven't got it?" 
 
 "What next ? Why should you ?" 
 
 "That isn't it. Do you understand I haven't 
 got it?" 
 
 "Of course I understand! Don't look like 
 that; you needn't worry about me" 
 
 "I am worrying. You don't know how sorry 
 I am for you." 
 
88 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Are you?" 
 
 Her face was spiritualised in the candlelight, 
 the girlish figure drooped pathetically. He took 
 the candlestick from her hand and put it on the 
 counter, and she didn't ask him "why." 
 
 "Peggy!" he exclaimed and she was sobbing 
 on his shoulder. 
 
 "Don't, kiddy! I love you." 
 
 She sobbed more unrestrainedly. He stroked 
 her hair, and kissed her on the cheek, stammer- 
 ing empty phrases of encouragement. Empty as 
 they were, they calmed her she was smiling 
 when she raised her head. "I love you," he said 
 again, thinking it true, and kissed her on the 
 lips. 
 
 After the silence, "I don't care now!" she said. 
 She was radiant, though her lashes glistened. 
 She stood at arm's length from him, regarding 
 him triumphantly. 
 
 "Will you wait till we can marry?" 
 
 Quick nods gave answer. 
 
 "Even if it's a long time? It will be a long 
 time, Peggy." 
 
 "I expect it will." 
 
 "You see, I'm not alone, I've got to help my 
 mother; my salary doesn't do much for me." 
 
 "Lot o' mothers, aren't there?" she pouted 
 playfully. "There's the comedy!" 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 89 
 
 "Oh yes, if I get the comedy taken, if it's a 
 success, we shall be as right as rain ! . . . You'll 
 give up the stage then, won't you? I don't want 
 you to go on acting when we're married." 
 
 ; 'When we are mar-ried/ " she hummed from 
 Fhe Belle of New York. "Oh, I'll give it up, 
 never fear! 
 
 *Wlien we are mar-ried, 
 What will you do? 
 I'll be so tender and faithful to you ' 
 
 Are those the right words? They sound good 
 enough, don't they?" 
 
 "They sound lovely," he cried. But there was 
 something lacking in his tone. 
 
 "Sh! don't talk so loud, we shall wake Mrs. 
 Tucker; she sleeps downstairs." She laughed 
 softly. "Things do change, don't they who'd 
 have thought five minutes ago? Naomi won't 
 know me when I go hack !" 
 
 "What'll she say? Will she " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Say you're foolish?" 
 
 "She knows that already." 
 
 "What ahout me? Why, does she guess, 
 then?" 
 
 "What do you think ? . . . Naomi thought you 
 liked me the first time you came. Did you?" 
 
90 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Of course I did," he said, though he couldn't 
 remember very clearly. He was conscious of 
 feeling less emotion than he would have expected, 
 conscious of being more self-possessed. He kissed 
 her again, to stimulate his ardour. "Well, is 
 she against it?" 
 
 "Why should she be?" 
 
 "Only the waiting." 
 
 "Oh, well, I'm not in a hurry! Leastwise " 
 
 He winced, and despised himself for wincing 
 while her arms were round his neck. "You 
 should be in a hurry," he said, humorously in- 
 dignant. 
 
 "Well, I won't put it off when you're ready. 
 How's that?" 
 
 "That's better. And you won't get tired of 
 being engaged to me, either? It'll be the longest 
 'engagement' you've ever had!" 
 
 "I say, I can write and tell mother I've found 
 one at last ! Now ask me if mother's going to be 
 against it. It'd make a lot of difference if she 
 was. But won't it suit her all right to get some- 
 body to take me off her hands ! Best bit of luck 
 that's come mother's way for a long time." 
 
 He said meditatively, "I don't think I shall 
 like your mother." 
 
 "I'll bet you do ! if you don't see too much of 
 her. She's much more popular in a company than 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 91 
 
 / am till the tour's about half over. Then she 
 generally has rows. I never knew mother to say 
 'no' to a subscription she's awfully good-na- 
 tured to strangers. . . . What about yours ? She 
 won't be keen on it, will she?" 
 
 "I don't know why she should mind; we aren't 
 together as it is. It won't make any difference 
 to what I do for her. ... I suppose I ought to 
 say 'good-night'?" 
 
 "I suppose so," she assented grudgingly, "or 
 we shall have Naomi coming down to see what 
 we're up to. Hullo! the candle's going out; it'll 
 be blind man's holiday." 
 
 "Can you manage the door? . . . I'll come 
 up with you and get another light. Yes, I'll go 
 up again, too then we can tell her together. I 
 think I'd like to do that." 
 
 "Would you? What for?" 
 
 "I think I'd better do that," he said. 
 
 The wick of the candle stump had dropped; 
 the china glowed redly for a moment, and then 
 faded out of view. She put her hand on his, 
 cautioning him to "mind the step," enjoining 
 him "not to make a noise." Naomi was standing 
 by the parlour mantelpiece, taking down her hair, 
 and jerked round as she saw his reflection in the 
 glass. 
 
 "You needn't mind him/' cried Peggy hilari- 
 ously, "we're engaged!" 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 HE presented her with a ring a few days later 
 a pitiful ring that he never noticed on her 
 finger without humiliation and his watch had 
 departed from him again, this time with the 
 chain attached. His cousin Harold was recently 
 engaged, and once when Tatham went to No. 12 
 he saw the fiancee and the diamond she was 
 wearing, and pitied Peggy quite superfluously. 
 To her own eyes his trumpery gift looked intrin- 
 sically important. 
 
 He had not been to No. 12 often since he was 
 a clerk in the office the inquiry, "Shall we see 
 you on Sunday?" was made at long, and longer 
 intervals and he did not deem it essential to 
 announce his love affair to his relatives. By this 
 time he had begun to question whether he in- 
 spired quite so warm a sense of satisfaction in 
 his uncle as he had imagined at the start, and 
 discretion hinted that he was not likely to in- 
 crease approval by talking of matrimony. He 
 did not mention the subject, either, when he 
 wrote to Sweetbay. 
 
 92 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 93 
 
 His labour on the comedy he had kept secret 
 from the first. The Spauldings, he conjectured, 
 would disapprove it, now that he belonged to 
 hops, and his mother would ask in every letter 
 long before the rough draft was finished "what 
 day his piece was to be produced." The delays 
 and rejections that he foresaw would be bitter 
 enough in any case there was no necessity to 
 make them bitterer. To the domestic circle of 
 the amateur a rejected manuscript proclaims him 
 inept and vain. The amateur's family is unaware 
 that in the literature of the world there is no 
 masterpiece which would not have been rejected 
 in one quarter or another if judged solely on its 
 merits. 
 
 Yes, he meant to spare himself that. Only in 
 Great Queen Street they heard his alternate 
 hopes and discouragements while the manuscript 
 grew bulkier, and by no means always were his 
 moods confided there. Far more frequently 
 were Peggy's affairs the topic. Within a fort- 
 night of the engagement her outlook brightened. 
 
 "You've been lucky to me," she exclaimed one 
 day; "I've had an offer 1" 
 
 She had obtained a part in a company that 
 was to give its opening performance in the Mid- 
 lands, and proceed distressfully northward. 
 
94* THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "You call that 'luck'?" he complained, when 
 she had rattled details. 
 
 "Oh, well, we shall be at Croydon for the last 
 week ; you'll be able to see me there !" Her glance 
 was very tender, but her gaiety jarred him a 
 little. He had to remind himself that one must 
 expect an actress to be happy at separation in 
 such circumstances. 
 
 "When is it you go to Croydon?" 
 
 "I don't know exactly," she said; "I haven't 
 got all the dates. I know we do go there for 
 the last week, because I asked which was our 
 nearest point to London. It's supposed to be a 
 three months' tour that means, it'll be about 
 eleven weeks before I see you. Rotten, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 "It isn't very jolly. If I weren't so hard up 
 I could go down to you for week-ends." 
 
 "Wouldn't that be aU right! Well, you'll 
 have to come round and talk to Naomi instead. 
 I say! don't you go making up to Naomi while 
 I'm away or there'll be trouble. My word!" 
 
 "Don't talk like that!" 
 
 "Oh, well, perhaps she is a bit too old for you! 
 I wouldn't trust you if she was my age, take 
 it from me. If you were here too much while 
 I was gone it'd be all up with you, young man 
 I'd ask Mrs. Tucker how long you'd stayed and 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 95 
 
 give you jip." She leant towards him, laugh- 
 ing, coquettish, amused by her own spring of 
 humour. 
 
 He went with her and Naomi to St. Pancras 
 on a Sunday morning to say au revoir at the 
 latest moment possible, and he found it strange 
 to watch actors and actresses again straggling 
 up a station platform, and to loiter by the win- 
 dow of a compartment labelled "Reserved: No 
 Child to Call Her 'Mother' Co." He was very 
 sorry that she was going; he was conscious that 
 he would miss her acutely; already London pre- 
 sented in his thoughts some of the vast forlorn- 
 ness that had intimidated him before his meet- 
 ing with her in Long Acre ; but, though he didn't 
 recognise the fact, and would have been ashamed 
 to perceive it, the prevailing melancholy of his 
 mood was not a lover's. She was bound for the 
 life that he had left! As he stood there, waiting 
 for the train to start, sentiment had reached the 
 journey's end. Situations sordid in actuality 
 were beautified, not by remembrance merely, by 
 temperament itself. Emotional to realise how 
 far she and her companions were about to travel 
 from him in less than two hours they would 
 have reached another world! 
 
 "I'll send you a postcard to-morrow, old boy," 
 she exclaimed, bending forward, but not lower- 
 
96 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 ing her voice. Outside, he smiled and nodded. 
 From what incalculable remoteness would the 
 postcard come! 
 
 Naomi had more to say to her than he while 
 they waited. There was a moment in which he 
 realised wistfully that he would never desire to 
 confide to her what the scene had made him feel, 
 a revealing moment in which he longed for some- 
 body who would have understood. He was, how- 
 ever, leagues from realising that not one person 
 in a multitude would have understood, or beheld 
 more than a posse of ill-mannered persons de- 
 parting for a tawdry sphere. 
 
 "Take your seats there, please!" 
 
 Girls thrust their heads through the windows 
 of the labelled compartments, with final injunc- 
 tions. She called to Naomi, "Don't forget to 
 send on my blouse and mind, I shan't pay her 
 for washing it, because of the things she's lost!" 
 She blew a kiss to him. "So long!" On the plat- 
 form, hands were waved. One enthusiast flour- 
 ished a dirty handkerchief. No man but Tatham 
 took off his hat. 
 
 "Eleven weeks'll soon go by," said Naomi for 
 comfort, as they turned. 
 
 "Oh yes," he concurred feebly. 
 
 "It'd have been nice if she could have got 
 something to do in town. But that's so difficult." 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 97 
 
 "Of course. Yes, I shall miss her. So will 
 you, I suppose? I know, she'll always be going 
 away I shall have to get used to it." 
 
 They walked out of the station, along the Sun- 
 day morning dullness of the streets. She was 
 removing, for financial reasons, to other lodg- 
 ings, Mrs. Tucker having objected to "cut up 
 her let." 
 
 "It'd have done you good to have someone to 
 talk to while she was gone," she said; "but I can't 
 ask you to come round, because I shall only have 
 one room." 
 
 "I know," he answered. "I'm sorry." Peggy 
 had told him that, affecting humorously to be 
 much relieved. "Yes, I shall be pretty lonely 
 without you both; it'll be as bad as ever, and 
 worse." 
 
 It was as bad as ever as soon as they had sep- 
 arated. Doughty Street looked desolate. He 
 spent the afternoon re-reading his manuscript 
 he had no heart to continue writing it and won- 
 dered again if it was destined to open a career 
 to him, and how long he must expect to wait for 
 the verdict from the Pall Mall Theatre, where 
 he meant to send it first. 
 
 The manuscript was now the only company 
 that he had on any evening. There was no one 
 for him to rush to, exultant, on the great night 
 
98 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 when the play was finished at last and he be- 
 lieved that never, were he to write for years, 
 could he do better work than this that lay accom- 
 plished on the table. That other people might 
 do so he admitted, but not he it was the best 
 of which he would ever be capable! His gaze 
 dwelt approvingly on the last words that he had 
 traced. Not so long ago he had foreseen his last 
 words scribbled at white heat on the final page; 
 they had been inserted with meticulous delibera- 
 tion on page 3 an insignificant amendment to 
 which he had devoted an hour's consideration. 
 No, there was no one for him to tell; but the 
 attic penned him, and, going out for a brisk turn 
 round Mecklenburgh Square, he tramped ex- 
 citedly to Hampstead Heath. 
 
 One benefit had accrued to him from Peggy's 
 absence he had been enabled to store shillings 
 in sufficient numbers to face the outlay for type- 
 writing that was necessary; all the morning his 
 manuscript lay concealed in the City, and he 
 sped with it to a typist in the luncheon hour. 
 The sensation of the "double life" was over- 
 whelming. 
 
 And when he had nerved himself to sully the 
 imposing neatness of that typescript by copper- 
 plate corrections, when it had been wrapped in 
 a new sheet of brown paper, and directed pains- 
 
33HE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 99 
 
 takingly and he handed it across a post office 
 counter, there was a little thrill in the reflection 
 that the girl who registered it must reverently 
 guess he was a dramatist. 
 
 "What time will it be delivered?'* he asked 
 her. 
 
 "Oh, some time this afternoon," said the girl 
 shortly. 
 
 She pitched his comedy into a basket. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THANKS to the ease with which human nature 
 can avert its eyes from the uncomplimentary, 
 Time is referred to exclusively as the "healer." 
 That it is the cynic that mocks love, friendship, 
 ideals, and various virtues, believed to be lifelong 
 while they absorb us, we prefer to ignore. Time 
 no larger a slice of it than three years had 
 taught Christopher Tatham to remember his first 
 comedy, when he remembered it at all, with 
 amused contempt. The emotions that it had 
 brought were dead. He marvelled that once he 
 had been so absurd as to fancy the work was 
 good. In fine, though he was still a clerk, aspir- 
 ing vainly to prove himself a playwright, Chris- 
 topher Tatham had learnt a good deal of his 
 craft. But the emotions that he scorned had 
 been Youth and Time, the double-faced, had 
 taken while it gave. 
 
 Marriage, often discussed, was still a distant 
 prospect. His income remained ridiculously in- 
 
 101 
 
102 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 adequate to support a mother and a wife as well. 
 This, despite a recent increase in his salary. 
 Once the girl had proposed that she should 
 "keep on acting" after they married, but, even 
 so, she would depend on his support during more 
 than half the year, for her own salaries were, 
 not merely few, but pitifully small. Once, too, 
 oppressed by the gloom of the outlook, he had 
 offered to release her from her promise; her 
 blithe refusal of his proffered sacrifice had, in 
 truth, rejoiced him less than he wished to think. 
 Of the attitude of Mrs. Harper, now that he 
 had at last met her, Tatham was far from com- 
 plaining. Her professional sojourn in Australia 
 had been prolonged so much beyond the period 
 foreseen that she had returned to London, cheer- 
 ful with brief prosperity, only a few months 
 since. Facing a presentation that he would 
 gladly have avoided, he had met, to his relief, a 
 stout, merry little woman, whose informal wel- 
 come had banished his restraint almost at once. 
 Cordial to him on his first visit, she now appeared 
 to entertain for him feelings that approached* 
 affection; and never had he witnessed in her 
 manner towards her daughter anything to ex- 
 plain the girl's earlier comments upon her. On 
 the contrary, he had occasionally been jarred in 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 103 
 
 noting a lack of suavity in Peggy's tone towards 
 her mother. 
 
 "Oh, because mother's taken to you, you think 
 she's an angel," said the girl a shade sullenly, 
 when he dropped a hint to her on the subject. 
 "She's a good deal better since she's been back, 
 but she's no treat to live with, all the same, I give 
 you my word I" 
 
 The three years had made little change in 
 Peggy Harper. She had still the same girlish, 
 rather vacuous expression, the same lithe slip of 
 a figure. Professionally she asserted that she 
 was eighteen, and so young did she look, and so 
 constantly was the assertion repeated, that 
 Tatham often noted with amusement that she 
 and her mother had come near to believing it. 
 When he was lamenting his position to Mrs. 1 
 Harper one afternoon he had found her alone 
 "Why, Peggy's only a child," she laughed. 
 "Bless the boy, you needn't worry about the 
 'waiting' yet; if you don't get married for five 
 years to come, there'll be plenty of time left for 
 your matrimonial squabbles. What is it you're 
 frightened of somebody else running off with 
 her?" 
 
 "I'm not frightened; I'm depressed," he said. 
 
 "Care killed a cat. 
 
104 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 'Laugh, and the world laughs with you; 
 Weep, and you weep alone !' " 
 
 She quoted with over-emphasis, but feeling, and 
 paused questioningly, as if for an audience to 
 applaud her. "You aren't the first author that's 
 had the hump. They've all had to go through 
 the same thing the best of them. And, take it 
 from me, it was never so easy for a young writer 
 to get a chance on the stage as it is to-day." 
 
 "Easy?" His mind's eye saw forlornly into a 
 corner drawer, where tattered comedies lay. He 
 looked round the long circle that each of them 
 had travelled, growing gradually shabbier, till it 
 had been buried in the corner drawer at last. "It 
 was never so expensive as it is to-day; I wish the 
 typewriter hadn't been invented!" 
 
 She nodded. "I've seen a bit. Lord! twenty- 
 five, thirty years ago, when they used to say 
 there was a 'dramatic ring,' you could count the 
 dramatists on one hand. Nobody else had a 
 look in. They didn't give a new man a chance 
 in those days, not once in a blue moon. Now, 
 why, they produce go-as-you-please plays by 
 amateurs all over the shop ! You don't have to 
 know anything like as much about your business, 
 to get a piece produced now, as you had to know 
 when I was a girl. I can tell you that, young 
 man!" She was suddenly self-important; the 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 105 
 
 sharpness of vexation in her voice made him won- 
 der what he had said to annoy her. "Don't you 
 run away with the idea that, because Betsy Har- 
 per isn't a star, she's never known anything bet- 
 ter than the kind of crowds you see her play in 
 now! Well, you haven't seen me play yet, but 
 you shall, some time, if you're good. I want you 
 to see me in a good part, the first time you do 
 come a Mrs. John Wood part, that's my line. 
 My God! if somebody'd write me a part like 
 Lady Twombley in The Cabinet Minister I'd 
 make things hum ! No, don't you run away with 
 that idea, Master Tatham. There was a time, 
 
 'There was a time when all I touched turned gold, 
 When friends flocked merrily to taste my bounty !' 
 
 You don't know who wrote that ? Clement Scott. 
 Let me see. It was when he was editing The 
 Theatre. That wasn't yesterday. You were in 
 your cradle. 
 
 'I never turned a dog into the cold, 
 Nor let the poor go starving to the County.' 
 
 Yes, there was a time when I knew people who've 
 gone to the top since then. I've heard 'em talk! 
 Millington used to come in to supper with us, 
 long before his burlesques were the rage when 
 he was selling pen'orths of pins over his father's 
 counter in Camden Town. He had something to 
 
106 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 say, too. Worse than you, he was. I remember 
 his first pantomime, one Christmas Eve, in Bir- 
 mingham awful mess he made of it! He came 
 to dinner with us the next day and opened the 
 window and wanted to throw himself out. We 
 had to hang on to him for a quarter of an hour, 
 with the snow blowing in on the goose. I know" 
 she beamed at him, with a world of meaning 
 "authors can't help it ; you're a rotten lot, every 
 one of you all hump before you get on, and all 
 swelled head afterwards. When you've had a 
 West End run, you'll swank over better men 
 than yourself. Yes, you, my modest violet 1" 
 
 "Don't you believe it. If I ever do get a West 
 End run, I shall remember what I've been 
 through." 
 
 "Oh, you'll remember right enough. Trust 
 you! They all remember, that's what makes 
 them so damned offensive they want to get a 
 bit of their own back. Authors? If I didn't 
 like you such a lot, I'd never be fool enough to 
 let Peggy marry an author, I'd rather see her 
 marry an actor and that's saying something. 
 Oh, I met somebody who knows you this week 
 Galbraith." 
 
 "Galbraith!" he exclaimed. "Do you know 
 him? How is he?" 
 
 "Do I know him?" echoed Betsy Harper. 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 107 
 
 "These kids asking me if I know Galbraith! I 
 knew him before London knew him. I knew 
 Galbraith when his part was 'The carriage waits, 
 my lord.' If you come in and have a bit of steak 
 with us on Sunday evening you'll see him." 
 
 It was in North Crescent, Bloomsbury, where 
 the Harpers were lodging, that his Sunday eve- 
 nings were generally spent now; and there on 
 the Sunday following he met the actor to whom 
 he had once confided his fear of being compelled 
 to leave "the profession." Galbraith's sparse 
 hair was whiter, his shoulders drooped a little 
 more, but it seemed to Tatham that the refined, 
 clean-shaven face had altered not at all. Very 
 few persons, ignorant of the man's vice, would 
 have suspected it by his appearance, which, 
 thanks to the long intervals of rigid abstinence, 
 remained a gentleman's. 
 
 "So you hadn't forgotten me, Galbraith. It's 
 a long time ago !" 
 
 "I didn't know you'd ever been in a crowd 
 with Galbraith," chirruped Peggy. "You never 
 told me. When was it?" 
 
 "In the brave days when we were twenty- 
 one," said Galbraith, "eh? Of course, we were 
 the bright particular stars, Tatham and I! Do 
 you remember that beautiful, soul-stirring bit of 
 bombast, Tatham, that always brought a round, 
 
108 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 when I took a step back and looked at the gal- 
 lery?" 
 
 "I daresay I remember it better than you do 
 by now," laughed Tatham. 
 
 "I shouldn't wonder I've spouted such a lot 
 of stuff just as rotten since. Betsy, when you 
 played 'Nan' and I was 'Young Mr. Simpson/ 
 and thought you a great actress the illusions of 
 youth " 
 
 "Hit him for me, somebody!" said Mrs. Har- 
 per. 
 
 "Why did you, with the giddy impulse of a 
 kindly heart, encourage me to persevere on a 
 path that has led me to the slough of second- 
 class shows in third-class towns? Now, you've 
 done better by this fellow, you've taken him off 
 it!" 
 
 "Me?" she cried. 
 
 "Oh, that wasn't mother!" 
 
 "Oh, that wasn't 'mother'? I thought it 
 sounded practical for Betsy!" 
 
 "That was the mother of invention I got off 
 it while Mrs. Harper was shining in Australia." 
 
 "I did shine, too, don't make any mistake about 
 that ! I wish I'd stopped there I don't see much 
 chance over here. Know anybody who wants me, 
 Galbraith?" 
 
 Galbraith smiled pensively. "He'll be writ- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 109 
 
 ing parts for us all by-and-by ! Don't forget me, 
 your old pal, Tatham. Give me a nice comfort- 
 able part with nothing to do in the last act, so 
 that I can get home to bed early. I'm not greedy 
 any more, I don't want to be in the picture at 
 the end ; a part that's the centre of attraction for 
 three acts, and carries a big salary, will be good 
 enough for me to-day." 
 
 "Who told you he was writing? Mother, of 
 course. She would!" said the girl tartly. 
 
 "And why shouldn't I? Is it a State secret? 
 'Mother, of course'! Why not? Is there any 
 particular reason why he shouldn't be told?" 
 
 "Talking about things before there's anything 
 to say! That's just mother. If you hear of an 
 ofF-chance of a part, it's 'Peggy's going out to 
 play it!' I don't believe in counting your 
 chickens before they're hatched, nor does Chris; 
 it's unlucky." 
 
 "Oh, telling Galbraith isn't counting chickens," 
 he interposed hurriedly; "he understands. I'm 
 one of the Great Unacted, Galbraith, that's all. 
 Do you ever come across anybody I know, any 
 of the people who were with us? I never see any 
 of them advertise. By the way, what's Miss 
 Knight doing now, Peggy?" 
 
 "Naomi? She was going out with some show 
 or other, the last time she was here. I suppose 
 
110 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 she's on tour. I hope so ; things have been awful 
 with her." 
 
 "She's got no talent," observed Mrs. Harper; 
 "she can't act for nuts, that young woman. I 
 don't know how she expects to do any good." 
 
 Tatham remembered Naomi Knight making a 
 similar comment upon others. 
 
 "I don't know how anybody expects to do any 
 good, if it comes to that. I'd rather be anywhere 
 than on the stage, myself," returned her daugh- 
 ter; and the servant, who had come in with the 
 steak, showed no surprise. They were in "pro- 
 fessional apartments," and she had overheard 
 the sentiments of more than one actress in her 
 time. 
 
 "Help yourself to beer, Galbraith." 
 
 "No beer for me to-day," said Galbraith 
 casually, "I'll have water I've had a touch of 
 liver." 
 
 "Oh, go on, a glass of beer won't hurt you!" 
 exclaimed the hostess. 
 
 "What do you press him for, mother, when 
 he says it isn't good for him?" remonstrated the 
 girl sharply much too sharply for her to sound 
 ignorant of the truth. "Will you have some 
 soda, Galbraith? Chris, you might bring that 
 syphon over." 
 
 It was acutely painful to Tatham to know the 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 111 
 
 man fearful even to taste ale lest it should in- 
 flame his tendency to excess ; but Galbraith, who 
 was once more strictly virtuous, owing to a re- 
 cent disaster, seemed to sup cheerfully enough. 
 It was not till he and Tatham were alone they 
 left North Crescent together that a sigh es- 
 caped him. 
 
 "Very tactless of Betsy at supper, Tatham," 
 he said, "what?" 
 
 "You mean ?" 
 
 "Persuading me to take beer. It's awkward 
 enough to have to refuse; and then when they 
 argue with you besides! If kind friends'd only 
 take 'no' for an answer, when I'm behaving my- 
 self, I shouldn't lose so many shops. It's a funny 
 thing, though, you know, if I had taken a glass 
 or two this evening, it wouldn't have led to any 
 ill results. It's only when I'm in an engagement 
 that I can't stop. I can take a drink as rationally 
 as anybody else when I haven't got to be at the 
 theatre at night; I know when I've had enough 
 then just as well as you do. But it's a most 
 mysterious thing the moment a salary depends 
 on my keeping sober, a single drop is absolutely 
 fatal to me ; it's like the taste of blood to a tiger. 
 Very curious, Tatham, very remarkable that a 
 man should be without self-control only at the 
 times when he has the strongest reasons for con- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 trolling himself? When I was at the Diadem, 
 when I was getting good terms, I once paid a 
 specialist two guineas just to put that point to 
 him. He said it was Very extraordinary.' Of 
 course, I knew that myself. I can't make it out. 
 Because it isn't as if I were a wastrel and didn't 
 care whether I was sacked or not it goes to my 
 heart to think of the chances I've thrown away. 
 Nobody despises me when I lose a shop so much 
 as I despise myself. I'm so disgusted with my 
 weakness that I can't look at myself when I'm 
 shaving and yet there it is! Still, Betsy 
 shouldn't persuade me; it'd do her no harm to 
 take to barley-water." 
 
 "What?" said Tatham, staring round at him. 
 
 "Didn't you know? Oh yes, Betsy's slightly 
 inclined that way or she used to be; I don't 
 know how it is with her to-day." 
 
 Tatham kept pace with him sickly. This, then, 
 was what the girl had meant by saying that she 
 had much to put up with. An immense pity for 
 Peggy engulfed him, a pity for Mrs. Harper. 
 Questions, misgivings eddied in his mind during 
 the five seconds before Galbraith spoke again. 
 
 "I don't mean that she's like me/ J added the 
 actor in a tone profoundly contemptuous of him- 
 self; "nothing to Well, you're engaged to 
 
 the girl! That's all right. Betsy isn't a 'bad 
 
POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 113 
 
 Case.' I wouldn't have mentioned it if I'd 
 guessed you didn't know. I'm sorry I let it 
 slip." 
 
 "You needn't be. Poor little Peggy! She 
 must have a rough time. I wish I could take her 
 out of it. I'm so frightfully hard up." 
 
 "In the City," said Galbraith, "aren't you?" 
 
 "In the City? In a clerkship! I haven't got 
 a thing to look forward to if I don't strike oil 
 writing. I shall soon have been at it for four 
 years ! I suppose 'four years' doesn't sound long 
 to the man who listens, but it sounds a long time 
 to the man who works and hasn't got anything 
 to show for it, except plays that no one'd have." 
 
 "Tolmore was writing for the best part of 
 twenty before he did any good. I used to go in 
 and smoke a pipe with him when they lived in 
 Featherstone Buildings. Jolly good chap he 
 was then. They've got a flat in Pont Street now, 
 and he looks the other way when he sees me in 
 the Strand. I suppose you haven't got a drama 
 up your sleeve, have you?" 
 
 "Why? Do you know anybody who'd take one 
 from me?" His voice was fervid. "I could write 
 one! I've only done comedies, but I'd write a 
 drama, if there were half a chance." 
 
 "Well, people'll take my recommendations 
 much sooner than they'll take me, you know. 
 
114s THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 I might get Logan Ross to read it; I know he 
 wants another drama to tour with. Of course," 
 he laughed, "you know what it'd have to be?" 
 
 "The kind of thing I used to play in, I sup- 
 pose?" 
 
 "I expect he'd want something more sensa- 
 tional than that they're Olivers for sensation 
 now. In the country you can't give them too 
 much of it. You might make some money if 
 he'd pay royalties but there'd be no kudos 
 except among the Logan Rosses; I suppose 
 they'd think it clever if it drew the public." 
 
 "I've got to make some money," said Tatham 
 doggedly. "I'll take any job that anybody '11 
 give me. That's the right point of view, isn't it? 
 I wouldn't sit down to write muck deliberately 
 if I had any choice, but if I don't write, I don't 
 do anything at all the City's a cul-de-sac. I 
 can stick as I am for years to come. I'm tired of 
 it, I'm ashamed of it. ... Is it any use my drop- 
 ping a line to him?" 
 
 "I'd better look him up," said Galbraith; "he 
 wouldn't answer a letter. I'll have a chat with 
 the gentleman. Then, if he's on, you can go and 
 see him yourself. You'll have to go with an idea, 
 you know it's no use your talking about a play 
 if you've nothing to propose and I shouldn't 
 tell him you write comedies; don't mention the 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 West End that'd be nearly as fatal as if you 
 had had a success there. Tell him youVe an 
 'inspiration for a money-maker' that'll be ex- 
 pressive to Ross and then gas about your big- 
 gest thrill. I don't know what there is left to 
 think of, myself, but if you can strike something 
 that hasn't been done yet, you'll hold his atten- 
 tion. Of course, there's the risk of his sneaking 
 your idea and passing it on to an author he 
 knows, but he's pretty decent for a mummer." 
 Eis voice was suddenly plaintive. "Between 
 ourselves, Tatham! I shouldn't have said that; 
 I think it's caddish to foul one's own nest. , . . 
 Where are you staying?" 
 
 They stopped under a lamp-post while the 
 young man pencilled his address on a scrap of 
 paper he had recently removed to Berners 
 Street; and before they separated, Galbraith 
 undertook to attend to the matter on the morrow. 
 As Tatham continued his way, however, his 
 thoughts dwelt less on the dramatic prospect than 
 on the domestic revelation. He had not been 
 engaged for three years without realising that 
 he wasn't in love with Peggy; but he had been 
 conscious that he had a duty to her. Heavily it 
 seemed to him that his duty had never been so 
 strong as now. He was pledged to marry her 
 one day; he meant to marry her one day. The 
 
sooner the day came, then, the better for her, 
 at any rate! ... A rough-and-tumble drama? 
 It would be a far stride from the delicate com- 
 edies in the drawer, comedies which, Mrs. Har- 
 per always told him, had the defect of being in- 
 sufficiently theatrical. Still, Hobson's choice 
 assuming he were fortunate enough to gain the 
 chance at all! And mightn't it be possible to 
 introduce some human nature even into a rough- 
 and-tumble drama? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE promise that Galbraith had made was the 
 kind of promise that many more reputable per- 
 sons in his profession, and out of it, would 
 promptly have forgotten; Galbraith, who had 
 broken vows innumerable towards himself, kept 
 his word. A few days later, Tatham was de- 
 lighted to receive a note advising him to call on 
 Mr. Ross the following evening, and he had in 
 the interval evolved an idea which, if devoid of 
 startling novelty, was unhackneyed enough to 
 justify the visit. His hope of palliating a crude 
 subject by the treatment that he gave to it, he 
 decided to suppress in the interview. 
 
 Mr. Logan Ross's house he referred to it as 
 his "residence" was situated in Loughborough 
 Road, and was furnished with no little comfort. 
 He was an indifferent actor, even judged by the 
 standard of a bad school, but as a manager he 
 had been blessed with an instinct for providing 
 what his public wanted. Thanks to that ines- 
 timable gift, he had made money. Of such plays 
 as he occasionally witnessed in the fashionable 
 
 117 
 
118 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 theatres of London he understood no more than 
 he understood of literature or the contents of 
 the National Gallery; but, now that instinct had 
 been supplemented by experience, he understood, 
 as accurately as any one man can ever do, at 
 what point in his own dramatic fare an audience 
 of the lower middle class would shuffle their feet 
 and want a crime to happen at what point their 
 appetites would turn from crime to sentiment; 
 he understood how often, in the menu of love and 
 murder, the savoury desired by every palate 
 would be for the low comedian to sit down on an 
 
 egg- 
 
 To such a manager, the author of comedies 
 that were too untheatrical for their cleverness to 
 make speedy converts had arrived to propose a 
 melodrama! 
 
 And the proposal found favour. It was, on 
 the face of it, a thing almost as strange as any 
 that had happened in Mr. Logan Ross's most 
 popular productions. The applicant had been 
 appraised in five minutes, and found wanting; 
 the expert had cast his large body into an arm- 
 chair and stretched his legs on his hearth with an 
 unconcealed yawn. Melodrama was a science, 
 and he was listening to an amateur! The story 
 had opened well enough in some respects, but it 
 was off the beaten track, and the beaten track 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 119 
 
 was where the money lay he didn't contemplate 
 prospecting. And then there had come one 
 nervous swerve of originality, which the appli- 
 cant himself esteemed less highly than much that 
 had preceded it, and the eye of experience saw 
 suddenly the glitter of gold. This young man 
 couldn't do justice to his notion; but he, Ross, 
 could do justice to it he could cut and paste 
 and pull the situations closer together; he could 
 knock out all the reasons why people did things 
 and make them go and do 'em quick! A novice 
 with fresh ideas might be worth cultivating, after 
 all. 
 
 He maintained a discouraging silence when the 
 author finished speaking. . . . "Humph!" he 
 grunted at last. 
 
 "You don't care for it?" said Tatham, trying 
 to sound indifferent. 
 
 "I don't say there isn't anything in it," ad- 
 mitted Ross, in the tone of a man seeking to be 
 generous, and paused again. 
 
 Tatham's idea of the value of what he had to 
 sell was falling fast. "Of course, I've told it 
 badly," he murmured. 
 
 "I don't say there isn't anything in it," re- 
 peated Ross ; "some of it's all right, but I don't 
 know I don't know Galbraith's a dear old pal 
 of mine, nobody's enemy but his own but I'll be 
 
120 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 perfectly plain with you, my dear chap. I can't 
 talk ahout a play that isn't written. I can't say 
 anything to-night. Galbraith ought to know 
 that. If you had put four acts in front of me 
 I could give you an answer; I could say, 'It's no 
 use to me/ or 'It's a go.' You know what a pro- 
 duction by me means people are going to tum- 
 ble over one another to see it. The respect's not 
 all on one side I've got to be very careful what 
 I give 'em. . . . Look here, bring me your play 
 complete, and if I like it, I do it !" 
 
 "What terms would you pay for it?" 
 
 "My dear boy," said Ross engagingly, "I'll be 
 as open as the day with you. If I like it, we 
 shan't quarrel about terms ; if I'm not keen on it, 
 I wouldn't have it as a gift. I can't say more 
 than that. I can't settle terms till I've seen the 
 thing. I suppose you could knock it off in a 
 couple of months, eh?" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "I don't know when it would be of any use to 
 me if you didn't I'll want to start rehearsing 
 in a couple of months. . . . Well, say three, at 
 the outside." 
 
 There were cigarettes and whisky and soda 
 before he left. He left exhilarated, persuaded 
 that, after all, three months was a long time 
 Ross, who hadn't to create the manuscript, had 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 cheerfully insisted that it was a long time and 
 it did not shrink affrightingly until some hours 
 later. When it had begun to shrink, he was sur- 
 prised to discover how remote the conclusion of 
 the next three months appeared to everyone who 
 hadn't the work to do. Galbraith assured him 
 that he could "do it on his head by then," and 
 Peggy echoed, "three months!" as if it were an 
 effort to project the imagination to a date so 
 distant. 
 
 "I say," she exclaimed happily on another oc- 
 casion, "you'll be able to get me a shop ! If Ross 
 takes the piece, mind you tell him he's to give me 
 an engagement in it." 
 
 'Yes, write a good part for Peggy," chuckled 
 her mother. "And don't forget Ma! What's 
 the use of having an author in the family if he 
 doesn't pull wires for us. What I want is a part 
 like 'Lady Twombley,' so now you know; I'll 
 make your piece a success for you!" Then, as 
 she saw his embarrassment, "I'm only joking," 
 she laughed. "Think you're talking to an am- 
 ateur? Don't I know you can't shape your play 
 to suit everybody?" 
 
 "I daresay I could manage something for 
 Peggy," he said, ruminating. "I'd like to do it 
 for you, if I could. . . . I'd like to do something 
 for Galbraith," 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Don't you make a fool of yourself!" she cried. 
 "Well, Ross wouldn't have him, if you tried it 
 on, but don't you go asking for trouble. We all 
 know what Galbraith's little weakness is. You'd 
 look lively if he turned up helpless on your first 
 night. No sentiment in business, my son take 
 it from one who knows. Now give Peggy a kiss 
 and go home to your scribbling. If you're stuck 
 on Sunday, you can come round and have supper 
 with us; and if you're busy, we shan't expect 
 you." 
 
 She would not, as his mother-in-law, win ap- 
 probation at No. 12 assuming that his uncle and 
 aunt ever invited her there he knew it with a 
 qualm, just as he knew what they would think of 
 Peggy if they ever saw her; but, whatever her 
 faults might be, he found her very human. And 
 when he did run round to North Crescent for 
 half an hour now, it was Betsy Harper, not her 
 girl, who showed the livelier interest in hearing 
 what his progress had been. It was she, not the 
 girl, who had sometimes a useful word to say. 
 It occurred to him distressfully more than once 
 that it was she, too, who understood better what 
 it meant to him to leave for the office every morn- 
 ing under a weight that threatened to crush him 
 not as a clerk, whose undistinguished duties 
 had become more or less mechanical, but as an 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 author whose desperate strokes were stemming 
 the rush of time. And this vulgar and intem- 
 perate little woman did understand it better than 
 her daughter, was indeed vividly sympathetic in 
 a situation where many far superior persons 
 would have seen nothing but a very ordinary 
 young man engaged in the prosaic task of trying 
 to make a living. As a woman she did not com- 
 plain of his being natural she complained of it 
 only as a reader. 
 
 It was unfortunate that impulse took him to 
 the house on a certain afternoon. Her greeting 
 was less cordial on that day. 
 
 "Hullo! Peggy's out," she said. 
 
 "Is she? What a nuisance!" But if he was 
 sorry to miss her, his regret was not so acute that 
 it damped his anticipation of a pleasant half- 
 hour. "What time will she be back?" 
 
 "Now you're asking!" said Mrs. Harper with 
 umbrage. "When it suits her ladyship, I sup- 
 pose. It's not for me to be told what time she'll 
 be back. There are daughters and daughters! 
 Do you know that, Mr. Tatham, Esquire?" 
 
 "Well, I suppose there are," he murmured un- 
 comfortably. "Peggy's a very nice one, though. 
 You think so too." 
 
 She regarded him for a moment in surly si- 
 lence: "I think so too? That's a funny thing 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 to say. How do you know what I think? Eh?" 
 
 "Well, I hope you think so, Mrs. Harper. 
 May I put it like that?" He had taken a seat 
 opposite her, and he got up, paling. Her con- 
 dition was evident; he was consumed by a desire 
 to escape without seeming to her abrupt. "I 
 can't stop I only ran in for a moment to see 
 how you were both getting on." 
 
 She took no notice of this; she repeated with 
 rising cantankerousness, "How do you know 
 what I think? I suppose, because you're an 
 author, you fancy you know all about everything, 
 don't you? An author?" Her laugh was deri- 
 sive. "A fine author you are !" 
 
 "Very eminent, I know! We needn't argue 
 that point." 
 
 "Argue?" Again her slow stare was resent- 
 ful. "I don't argue with you. A woman like 
 me argue with you? That's a very impertinent 
 remark! I don't argue with you; I don't pay 
 you such a compliment. I tell you what I've got 
 to say, I don't argue with you. Who are you?. 
 I take no insults from anybody." 
 
 "Insult?" he stammered. "Mrs. Harper . . 
 Well, we'll talk about it another time." 
 
 "Oh, dear me! 'We'll talk about it another 
 time' spoken with dignity the actor crosses 
 the stage! Perhaps there won't be any 'other 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 125 
 
 time, 5 my lord duke ; that's for me to say. These 
 are my rooms, I think? I pay for these rooms, 
 don't I? and just who I choose comes to them, 
 and nobody else. D'ye see?" The quiet in- 
 solence of her tone shrilled to passion. She was 
 all at once a prey to violent, unreasoning rage. 
 "You come here at my good pleasure. If you 
 idon't behave yourself, you don't set foot in the 
 place again! D'ye hear that? I won't have you 
 here; I won't let Peggy marry you. Who are 
 you you and your plays? Do you think she's 
 going to spend her life waiting for you? A girl 
 like her could do better for herself to-morrow 
 than marry .a chap like you!" 
 
 "That's so. If Peggy feels the same way 
 about it, she's quite free." 
 
 "Oh, is she?" She paused; her views veered; 
 there was infinite meaning in her alcoholic bitter- 
 ness. "I dare say. Well, take care you don't 
 get a breach of promise case, Mr. High-and- 
 Mighty, that's all! You can't play fast and 
 loose with a girl of mine, don't you believe it. 
 Not much you can't! A good girl she is, a long 
 sight too good for you! If she'd taken my ad- 
 vice, she'd have sent you to the right-abouts long 
 ago." She screamed, she was hideous; her in- 
 vective pursued him to the staircase. 
 
 It was unfortunate because neither of them 
 
SL26 -THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 ever contrived to Banish the restraint that the 
 occurrence caused. They tried to talk as if the 
 scene were forgotten when, at Peggy's solicita- 
 tion, he went to the house again ; but on the man's 
 side there was misgiving, and on the woman's 
 there was shame, and the familiar tone of con- 
 fidence was never successfully re-established. "I 
 can only ask you to think that mother wasn't 
 well," the girl had pleaded. And he had kissed 
 her very tenderly, moved by the undesigned 
 pathos of the words conscience-stricken, too, in 
 realising all that had underlain his retort that 
 she was free if she wished their engagement at 
 an end. 
 
 It was at this stage that the ordinary young 
 man ceased to make illusions for himself. He 
 no longer strove to stifle repentance with the 
 assertion that "though he wasn't in love, he was 
 very fond of her." He knew that the tenderness 
 of his kiss had been the tenderness of pity; he 
 saw clearly that he had blundered the night that 
 ihe kissed her first. But he was honourable, or 
 weak enough the epithet varies with the point 
 of view to believe that he would be a cad to 
 own it to her. She had waited for him so long; 
 she had waited because he had asked her to wait ! 
 The knowledge burdened him. That he had been 
 very young when he asked her, that, in looking 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 back, he seemed to have been amazingly young 
 and mindless, even for his age, could not liberate 
 him, he felt. Ethically, perhaps, he would be 
 doing her a greater wrong to marry her than to 
 confess the truth; but conventionally, the worse 
 offence would be to tell her so late that he didn't 
 care for her. And she would think he was throw- 
 ing her over because her mother drank. Horrible 
 to make a girl feel that! . . . Horrible also to 
 realise that, after marriage, he must often expect 
 to find the mother quarrelsome in her cups I 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WHEN the drama for Mr. Logan Ross was 
 delivered it had been accomplished within three 
 atrocious months Mr. Logan Ross's pressing 
 need of it had evidently subsided. Some weeks 
 passed before he had leisure to read it. Com- 
 municating curtly with the author at last, he 
 offered to buy the work outright for ten pounds. 
 And after an interval of blind fury, the author 
 with equal curtness accepted the offer. 
 
 "At any rate," Galbraith had said, "you get 
 your foot in it's a production. However rotten 
 the price was, I shouldn't try to stand out for 
 terms with a first play." And Mrs. Harper had 
 remembered someone, subsequently celebrated, 
 who sold his first comedy for a pound per act. 
 
 Yes, in view of all the circumstances, it was 
 probably as much as he would be able to com- 
 mand in any quarter, so the offer was accepted. 
 And his chief desire now was to receive the 
 cheque and never to be reminded of his melo- 
 drama again. 
 
 The hopes that he had built on it were dust; 
 
 128 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 129 
 
 he told himself that he didn't care a curse for the 
 thing any more. He had cared in writing it, had 
 in hours found it absorbing, even while he called 
 himself a fool for the pains he was taking to em- 
 broider shoddy ; his efforts to redeem the plot by 
 characterisation had been too strenuous for him 
 to be able to regard the manuscript simply as a 
 potboiler. But deliberately he had chosen a plot 
 opposed to his tastes and written to make money. 
 And he was offered ten pounds! He solilo- 
 quised about Logan Ross, impugning his integ- 
 rity; he said, with perfect justice, that a piece 
 must be worth more than ten pounds to be worth 
 anything at all. lie told the walls of the bed- 
 room in Berners Street that the manager whom 
 The Wigan Examiner described as "a powerful 
 and romantic actor" was a strongly qualified 
 thief. With that lack of business intelligence 
 which Mr. Spaulding deplored in him, he failed 
 to differentiate between clumsy or penal dis- 
 honesty and dishonesty on safe or commercial 
 lines. He was happy to reflect that Mr. Logan 
 Ross would have the impudence to seek no inter- 
 view, after their exchange of epistolary brevities. 
 Mr. Ross, in the least embarrassed manner im- 
 aginable, wrote asking him to call "with regard 
 to a few slight changes in the scrip.'* 
 
130 
 
 And as the cheque wasn't enclosed in the letter, 
 he swallowed his indignation and went. 
 
 So frank and free was the manager's greeting 
 that he seemed leagues from suspecting indigna- 
 tion. Indeed, he spoke like one conscious of 
 having done a noble deed. 
 
 "It isn't right yet, Tatham," he declared, "but 
 there's stuff in it don't worry. I wasn't going 
 to refuse it because it wobbled a bit. I want to 
 give it a chance. Some of it's A 1 no kid! 
 I can tell you what's wrong; I'll tell you what to 
 do. I'm going to put my back into it for you." 
 
 It appeared to be necessary to say that he was 
 "very kind." Ross, with no ear for inflections 
 this evening, deprecated gratitude. "Not at all," 
 he murmured, "not at all!" He produced the 
 typescript and it seemed to have aged years in 
 his possession. "Now," he said, and objected to 
 one of the best scenes; "that won't do, of course." 
 
 "You think not?" said Tatham blankly. 
 
 "Fatal, my boy! That wants to come bang 
 out, and you've got to write something in its 
 place. Turn it over in your mind, and " 
 
 "Something in its place?" 
 
 "Well, I needn't have bothered you to come 
 over if a cut was all that was necessary I can 
 cut" replied Ross ingratiatingly; "we want 
 something written in there. Now here" he 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 131 
 
 licked his thumb and turned pages that revealed 
 reckless scrawls, the burns of cigarettes, and 
 splashes of tea or coffee "now here a cut will 
 do the trick. This is in the way ! All very care- 
 fully arranged, I know, but it's in the way. The 
 audience don't want to hear why he wasn't 
 drowned. Show him, my boy; it doesn't matter 
 how he was saved, bring him on: 'That I am 
 here to prove !' Terrific round of applause. See 
 what I mean? You lose your grip if you explain 
 things, Tatham. He's there! they know damn 
 well he has been saved, because there he is! 
 That's what we want in drama. And another 
 thing Again he licked and turned. 
 
 It was strange: the author had thought his 
 interest in the play was dead, yet it writhed under 
 the scalpel. 
 
 "Another thing," continued Ross, "your vil- 
 lain isn't really a bad man, he only connives at 
 a murder you've got to strengthen your vil- 
 lain." 
 
 "I tried to make him a human being." 
 
 "We don't want human beings, my boy, we 
 want parts. He shilly-shallies. That'll never 
 do; he must be consistent, old chap; he mustn't 
 have pangs of conscience. Why, you've given 
 your villain lines that'd queer the whole show; 
 the audience 'd begin to be rather sorry for him! 
 
132 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 They don't want to be sorry for the villain, they 
 want to hoot him. You'll have to alter that; 
 you'll have to go over the part again and give 
 him more relish for crime." 
 
 "Oh," said Tatham morosely. "Is that all?" 
 "Well, I'm going to talk to you about my own 
 part by-and-by I want to get through the 
 smaller matters first. You can't expect to do a 
 drama without a little work, old chap, you know ! 
 Yes ! this scene in the second act comes too soon, 
 it wants transferring to the third you'll have to 
 turn the second and third acts about a bit to get 
 it in, but it only needs a little thinking out. And 
 
 there's a " 
 
 "In other words, you want a different play?" 
 "What I want is a few changes," replied Ross 
 with heat. "You don't mind making a few 
 changes for the good of your piece, I suppose? 
 Z shall have enough to do on it when you're fin- 
 ished! A different play? Who said anything 
 about a 'different play'? I say that this one 
 needs improving. So it does." 
 
 "It needs rewriting, by what you tell me." 
 "And precious few plays are submitted that 
 don't!" 
 
 "Precious few plays are sold for ten pounds* 
 though." He forced a pleasanter tone. "I've 
 no doubt your criticisms are all perfectly right, 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 13$ 
 
 but I can't afford the time. On the whole, I'd 
 rather let the business slide.'* 
 
 "What's the use of talking through your hat?" 
 demurred Ross jocularly. But there was mis- 
 giving in his eyes. 
 
 "I'm quite serious. It doesn't amount to any- 
 thing; I tell you frankly I'd never have done the 
 thing if I had dreamed what you were going to 
 offer for it. As to doing it over again, the mere 
 thought of the job makes me feel sick." 
 
 "Don't forget the kudos of a production, my 
 boy I take you into the Theatre!" He ex- 
 patiated with much wealth of imaginative detail 
 upon the glory that was included in his offer. 
 "And besides, a pound or two more or less 
 needn't stand between us," he added, noting that 
 Tatham looked obstinate. 
 
 "Will you pay royalties?" 
 
 "Royalties?" echoed Ross. "I never paid roy- 
 alties in my life. I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll 
 make it fifteen pounds, if you like. There!" 
 
 Now he was eager to secure the piece, and 
 Tatham was far from eager to alter it. It was a 
 situation in which the advantage was for once 
 on the author's side. But he had gained the ad- 
 vantage by no subtler means than sheer weari- 
 ness of spirit, and when the other repeated, 
 "Fifteen pounds. Come! And you can do all 
 
134 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 that's wanted in a week!" he answered limply, 
 "Very well." Had he been gifted with the fore- 
 sight and ability to haggle with Ross for an hour, 
 the actor would have agreed to pay a small roy- 
 alty rather than see those four acts withdrawn 
 from him and Christopher Tatham would have 
 been in possession of a comfortable income for 
 many years. 
 
 The dilapidated typescript sprawled worth- 
 lessly on the couch. Even the expert who had 
 been attracted by it would not have backed his 
 fancy by a hundred pounds cash. To estimate 
 the commercial value of a play before the pro- 
 duction is as exact a science as to judge the po- 
 tential value of a lottery ticket before the draw- 
 ing it may be a fortune, or wastepaper. 
 
 There were other interviews with Ross. He 
 was not satisfied with the title that the author 
 had chosen, nor was he satisfied with any of his 
 own discovery. It was speedily evident that he 
 expected Tatham to be as vitally interested by 
 the matter as if they had been in partnership; 
 and, to do the man justice, he was hospitable. 
 There were long evenings passed in the society 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Ross an amiable and foolish 
 little woman who, when the actor made her ac- 
 quaintance, had been a fairy in a pantomime 
 during which a title was sought with an assiduity 
 
.THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 185 
 
 thai entailed frequent refreshments. The host's 
 consuming desire was to combine the words 
 "London" and "Girl" in naming the drama 
 both, he declared, were "lucky" and one o'clock 
 used to strike while the problem remained un- 
 solved. Tatham's proposal, "A London Girl," 
 had been dismissed as much too tame for a play- 
 bill. Mrs. Ross, simpering, had cried trium- 
 phantly, "I know! 'A Girl in London.' ' It was 
 the kind of suggestion that she usually con- 
 tributed. 
 
 "What do you think of TDon't Let Your Girl 
 Go to London' ?" Ross inquired one night. 
 
 Tatham said candidly what he thought, and 
 Ross relapsed into gloom. "Well, it amounts to 
 this," he said, "we can't have both! It's got to 
 be 'London' or it's got to be 'Girl.' " 
 
 "I like 'Girl/ " chirped the lady. 
 
 ".Yes, well, I like 'London,' " said her hus- 
 band. "Look here, Tatham, what the title's got 
 to do is paint a picture of London as it as it 
 to paint the whole blooming city. See what I 
 mean? It's got to make the public think of Lon- 
 don as it jolly well looks to a girl who's left her 
 home and walks down the Strand, or wherever 
 you like, without a penny in her pocket, asking 
 herself what the devil she's to do for food and 
 shelter. I want the public to stand looking at 
 
186 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 our bill in the High Street and thinking to them- 
 selves, 'Ah me ! Yes, indeed !' See what I mean? 
 I want every young woman that reads the bill to 
 put herself in the girl's place for a moment; I 
 want every old woman that reads it to think of 
 her own girl up in London. 'Aye, and what 
 about our Annie?' Then we've got their bobs 
 we pull 'em in to see the show that week I Do 
 you like 'Heartless London'? No give us the 
 cigars over here, Ruby ! no, that doesn't hit the 
 spot. 'A Lassie in London' ? How do you like 
 'A Lassie in London' ?" 
 
 "She isn't a lassie," said Tatham. "What do 
 you think of 'A Girl Against the World'?" 
 
 Ross shook his head. "I want 'London'!'* 
 ' 'London as it Really Is' ?" said the ex-fairy. 
 
 "Rotten!" he growled. '"Yet London 
 Laughs.' Eh? 'Yet London Laughs'! It's 
 good?" 
 
 "What does it mean?" said Tatham. 
 
 "Mean? It means the heartlessness of Lon- 
 don, of course! 'Yet London Laughs'; in spite 
 of everything in spite of that poor girl's suffer- 
 ings, London laughs!" He sighed. "If you 
 didn't see what it meant, it's off a title's got to 
 shout, or there's nothing in it. I want a title 
 that's going to bring the wickedness of London 
 before every pair of eyes in the provinces, I 
 
JHE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 want to turn the West End, and the East End, 
 and the whole bally caboodle inside out in three 
 I've got it!" A smile of beatitude overspread 
 his face. "Don't worry, my boy, don't worry; 
 we needn't talk any more, I've got it! 'London 
 Inside Out.' " 
 
 And to "London Inside Out" he clung. Tat- 
 nam made many attempts both on that evening 
 and in their subsequent meetings to persuade him 
 to change it even going so far as to devise alter- 
 native titles as an inducement but Ross was 
 resolute. It mightn't be a "literary" title, he 
 admitted; as to that, he "knew nothing and cared 
 less ; there was money in it, and money was what 
 he was on the road for!" 
 
 It was not the sole source of argument. 
 Peggy, fortunately, was again employed in an- 
 other tour of No CJuld to Call Her "Mother" 
 when the time came for his company to be 
 formed; but Galbraith had appeared in Berners 
 Street one Sunday morning, before the author 
 was out of bed, to beseech him to "use his influ- 
 ence" with Ross. Scrupulously shaved, and neat, 
 but shabby with a shabbiness that was tragic, the 
 suppliant sat at the foot of the bed, explaining 
 that he had approached Ross vainly for an en- 
 gagement, and confessing to despair. The dan- 
 ger of entrusting a part to him was so widely 
 
138 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 known that his chance of obtaining work grew 
 slenderer yearly, and he unfolded a piteous tale 
 of borrowed sixpences and destitution. Sol- 
 emnly he swore that, this time, confidence in him 
 shouldn't be misplaced. "I've had my punish- 
 ment, Tatham," he faltered. "If you knew all 
 I've been through the last six weeks you wouldn't 
 doubt me ; there are things that nobody ever for- 
 gets. I I slept in a registered lodging-house 
 one night ; another night, I slept on the Embank- 
 ment. By God, boy, if you'll do what you can 
 for me, I'll deserve it; I can't say any more." 
 His voice broke. 
 
 Not even in the urgency of his need did he 
 hint, "You owe it to me for introducing you to 
 Ross!" 
 
 Tatham leant forward and gripped his hand. 
 There were tears in the eyes of both men. "I'll 
 move heaven and earth for you, Galbraith," he 
 said; "I'll go and see him this afternoon!" Much 
 of the sum that had been paid for the play was 
 in a pocket of the clothes that were heaped on 
 the chair, and he thrust a five-pound note upon 
 Galbraith. But the man wouldn't accept it; 
 after much parley he consented to borrow a sov- 
 ereign. They went out together for a steak at 
 the Horseshoe; and when they had returned to 
 Berners Street, Tatham left him in the bedroom 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 with some cigarettes, and departed fervidly for 
 Loughborough Road. 
 
 On the tedious journey his sense of eloquence 
 abated somewhat. When he found strangers in 
 the drawing-room the additional delay reduced 
 his confidence still more. Ross was plainly 
 mystified by his arrival, for his visits at the 
 "residence," though frequent, had hitherto al- 
 ways been expected, and the embarrassment of 
 intrusion weighted his tongue. He made per- 
 functory replies, but contributed no comments to 
 the conversation, which was concerned with the 
 iniquities of the "bricks-and-mortar managers." 
 It was his earliest intimation that a "bricks-and- 
 mortar manager" signified the lessee of a theatre 
 in which a touring company performed. 
 
 Presently he had a word apart with Ross, and 
 they withdrew. "Excuse me for a moment, 
 boys," said Ross, and led the way to the dining- 
 room. "What is it, old chap?" 
 
 "Well, I'm awfully sorry to disturb you, but 
 I've come to ask you to do something as a special 
 favour to me," began Tatham. "Galbraith tells 
 me you're afraid of engaging him. Now I've 
 been with him all the morning; he's in frightfully 
 low water, and I assure you he's to be trusted 
 I know what I'm talking about. You couldn't 
 have a better man for 'Colonel Forrester,' he'd 
 
140 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 be excellent in the part. I want you to let him 
 have it." 
 
 "Not on your life!'* said Ross. "I know all 
 about Galbraith. I know very well what he 
 could do with the part he's a jolly good actor; 
 but I wouldn't have him as a gift." 
 
 "Yes ; well, I want you to reconsider your de- 
 cision. He's a friend of mine. I've promised 
 him to beg you to give him another chance. Now 
 look here " 
 
 "My dear chap/* interrupted Ross firmly, "I'd 
 do anything that I could to oblige you with 
 pleasure, but " 
 
 "You can do this!" 
 
 "But you're asking an impossibility! Gal- 
 braith? He's a pal of mine, too. I like old 
 Galbraith very much out of business; in it, I 
 wouldn't have him at any price. It's no use, my 
 boy! I gave him a chance when he was on his 
 uppers; he took his sacred oath he'd keep his 
 word if I tried him again. What happened? 
 He was blind to the world on the first night in 
 Bolton, before we'd been out three weeks! He 
 means it right enough to-day; he's chock-full of 
 good intentions while he talks, but he can't help 
 himself; he's a madman before the tour's half- 
 way through it's the same thing all over again." 
 
JHE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 141 
 
 "I've seen him touch nothing but water for 
 months." 
 
 "How many? Two's his record, ain't it? 
 He'll be steady for a bit, I know, but he can't 
 keep it up; all of a sudden he rolls on to the 
 stage something horrible; it's a mystery to me 
 how he manages to remember a word of his lines 
 if he hadn't been in the profession all his life, 
 he'd be dumb, the state he gets in! I tell you 
 straight, Tatham, I wouldn't have him if he paid 
 me, I wouldn't have him if he offered a pre- 
 mium." 
 
 They had not sat down; they were standing 
 near the door, and he turned towards it with an 
 air of finality. In his own interests, Tatham 
 would have found no more to say, but in Gal- 
 braith's he wouldn't accept dismissal. The 
 thought of the man's suspense in the bedroom, 
 as the hours wore by, of his wretchedness if he 
 must be told at last that the embassy had failed, 
 spurred him to persistence in the face of defeat. 
 He intercepted Ross, he spoke vehemently of 
 its being a crisis in a mutual friend's life. Under 
 the stress of feeling, rather unusual phrases came 
 to his lips, and he was conscious and a little 
 ashamed of sounding theatrical while he pleaded. 
 Ross did not seem to be aware of it ; he listened, 
 frowning and restless, and there were signs of 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 irresolution in his aspect now. Then Tatham 
 stumbled on the word "sentiment," and the actor 
 was immediately defensive. 
 
 "No one's got more sentiment than me," he 
 cried. "Sentiment? I'm the last man in the 
 world to accuse of having no sentiment !" 
 
 "Well, listen to it to-day; don't be hard to a 
 poor devil who's on the rocks! You'll be sorry 
 if you are you'll always be sorry afterwards. 
 If I have to go back and tell him you refuse 
 well, Galbraith's desperate; on my honour, he's 
 desperate! He's been sleeping on a bench on 
 the Embankment. Suppose he makes away with 
 himself to-night more unlikely things have hap- 
 pened how will you feel? A man you've been 
 pals with for years?" . . . 
 
 Ross blinked; his swimming eyes sought a 
 highly-coloured oleograph on the wall. 
 
 "You'll always remember you could have pre- 
 vented it! You'll never forget that a message 
 from you to-day would have saved him, set him 
 on his feet, given him a chance to turn over a 
 new leaf!" 
 
 "It's a very unfair thing," said Ross tremu- 
 lously, "for you to come and talk to me this way. 
 Yes, it is, a damned unfair thing! you aren't 
 entitled to ask me to give him the part. You 
 aren't risking anything; it won't cost you any- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 148 
 
 thing if he ruins the piece it's my property, 
 you've sold it right out.'* 
 
 The advocate paused blankly. Then "I know 
 I'm not entitled," he said. "I'm asking it as a 
 fine action, as a generosity; I'm appealing to 
 your heart!" With a touch of inspiration, he 
 added, "to your sentiment 1'* 
 
 Ross gave in. He yielded reluctantly, but he 
 yielded and the gesture by which he proclaimed 
 his unfailing sentiment's response was worthy of 
 a large audience. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WITH that incident the author's association 
 with a melodrama from which every higher qual- 
 ity had been eliminated would practically have 
 closed but for the gratitude of Galbraith. To 
 attend the rehearsals, even had he wished to at- 
 tend them, would have been impossible for a 
 dramatist who sat every week-day driving a 
 clerk's pen, and it was only by Galbraith that he 
 was reminded of the play. Encouraged by his 
 proximity to a salary, the "Colonel Forrester" 
 of the cast had succumbed to the offer of a fur- 
 ther sovereign to supply immediate necessaries 
 and improve his attire. An elderly figure in the 
 frock-coat that had been released from the pawn- 
 broker's, he presented himself in Berners Street 
 on many evenings before the tour began ; and it 
 was he who wrote to Tatham after the opening 
 night, announcing that the piece had "gone like 
 a house afire." 
 
 To the man who had written the piece the news 
 seemed extraordinary and well-nigh incredible. 
 So far from rejoicing at it, since he had neither, 
 
 144 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 145 
 
 a pecuniary nor an artistic interest in its fate, 
 his thoughts turned bitterly to the despised man- 
 uscripts, for which he had hoped and prayed. If 
 it had heen one of those that had "gone like a 
 house afire" ? What it would have meant ! Even 
 if he had been such a consummate ass as to sell 
 it for fifteen pounds, wouldn't he be rapturous, 
 wouldn't he have trod Oxford Street to-night 
 thanking God for the position that the success 
 had given to him! There would have been repu- 
 tation then, there would have been a future. 
 This meant nothing nothing but the satisfac- 
 tion of Ross, who as yet had not written to ex- 
 press it, and the chance of perpetrating similar 
 trash at better terms. He had done with trash. 
 Never such fustian again ! 
 
 The fools! A rush of disgust for the crowds 
 whom it was delighting made him see red. He 
 was unjust, he was unreasonable he had 
 planned his play for the majority, and they had 
 welcomed it, he should have been grateful to 
 them; but the artist who wept for two of his 
 children in the corner drawer just two, to be 
 exact, the latest additions to the mortuary 
 could behold nothing but the irony of a very 
 commonplace situation. 
 
 A very commonplace situation, indeed, in its 
 essentials. But time emphasised it; the drawing 
 
146 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 power of London Inside Out proved to be con- 
 spicuous even among attractions of its class. 
 From the reports of the correspondents of the 
 theatrical organs, which Mrs. Harper flourished 
 at him when he paid duty visits, Tatham learnt 
 only that the drama had been "enthusiastically 
 received" in the towns where it was performed; 
 but a second letter from Galbraith apprised him 
 that Ross was jubilant, and that there was every 
 likelihood of the tour being extended much be- 
 yond the period foreseen. 
 
 In a narrative of humdrum humanity, let the 
 reader be refreshed by an event that savours of 
 the sensational and preposterous Galbraith had 
 enclosed a postal order for the two pounds; an 
 unsuccessful actor had repaid a loan ! 
 
 The author of an entertainment that was 
 launched on a career of financial splendour in 
 the provinces continued to contemplate the wall 
 and the water-pipe, among other clerks, who had 
 no suspicion of his achievement. At once 
 ashamed of the work and of the price he had 
 obtained for it, he spoke of it to no one, not even 
 to his mother when at Easter he went to Sweet- 
 bay at a reduced fare and spent Sunday and 
 much of Monday in the boarding house. Con- 
 stitutionally incapable of keeping any secrets but 
 her own, she would surely have announced the 
 
matter to his Regent's Park relatives, and he 
 shrank from the thought of the questions that 
 they all would ask him. He compromised with a 
 sense of unfilial reticence by remarking that she 
 stood in need of a new dress and giving her the 
 money to have one made. The windfall elated 
 her the more because the Spauldings had given 
 her money for a dress the previous afternoon 
 arriving in their own car, when all the boarders 
 were on the steps ; and after he had gone she lost 
 his present at bridge with a vivacious incapacity 
 for the game. 
 
 No, he mentioned the play in no quarter, and 
 when a few weeks had passed he did not hear of 
 it any more, until a letter from Peggy revived 
 the subject. The letter was headed "Grand 
 Theatre," and she wrote, "London Inside Out 
 is against us at the Royal here and doing all the 
 business. What ho! (Our houses are simply 
 rotten.) I'm going to scramble to-morrow and 
 get round in time to see a bit of it. One of our 
 crowd met somebody in the show yesterday and 
 heard that it is an enormous go everywhere. I 
 say! if you had got royalties what? Well, bet- 
 ter luck next time, old boy! Naomi is joining 
 our crowd. There was a fortnight's notice in the 
 air, and I got wind of it, and gave her the tip. 
 Won't it be jolly? This is a married crowd, 
 
148 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 pretty nearly, and I haven't made a pal in it." 
 She remained, with endearments, his Constant 
 Sweetheart. 
 
 It was by far the most spontaneous letter that 
 she had written to him for a very long time. The 
 weekly correspondence strained her inventive 
 faculties a great deal, for ordinarily there was 
 nothing new to say, and she found it a most 
 wearisome effort to cover a sheet of notepaper. 
 She had arranged that when she was away she 
 would write to him every Monday, but often her 
 letter was dated "Thursday," and even when 
 Thursday had come and the necessity could be 
 postponed no longer, she confronted it with very 
 ill grace. 
 
 The posters of London Inside Out on the 
 walls of the Lancashire town, however, had de- 
 lighted her for more than one reason. Not only 
 were they a promise of material for her letter 
 this week, they made her more interesting in the 
 eyes of her companions she was engaged to the 
 "Christopher Tatham" whose name was to be 
 detected in small type on the playbills. Of 
 course, she had announced the name of her fiance 
 as soon as the piece was presented, exhibiting 
 the notice in The Stage that announced its 
 "enthusiastic reception," but now her importance 
 was driven home. The leading lady, whose 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 149 
 
 amiability had hitherto had a touch of condescen- 
 sion in it, was calling her "dear'* quite warmly, 
 and even old Miss Baker, who asserted that she 
 had been with Barry Sullivan and was overbear- 
 ing towards everybody else, grew cordial to her. 
 
 "I'm going to see a bit of London Inside Out 
 to-night," she told a young actor as they stood 
 chatting in the wings. "I wish they'd play up ; 
 ten minutes is about as much as I shall get of it, 
 at this rate!" 
 
 "I'm going," said Mr. Nelson; his part con- 
 cluded a few moments before her own; "we'll go 
 together, if you like. Don't take too long chang- 
 ing, though!" He was not one of the married 
 members of the company to w T hom she had re- 
 ferred; he was a pleasant-faced boy not much 
 older than herself, though, as an actor, he already 
 told falsehoods about his age. "They were chock- 
 a-block there last night, eh?" 
 
 "Rather!" she said. "All right, bang at the 
 dressing-room door when you're ready. I shan't 
 be long. I mean to get round before they finish, 
 if I break my neck to do it." 
 
 "I expect you'll see more of it than you want 
 before long, eh?" 
 
 "Why, how do you mean?" 
 
 "The 'best boy of all' will be getting you 
 shopped in it soon, I suppose? Look at her con- 
 
150 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 scious smile ! What's the use of loving an author 
 if he can't work engagements for us, eh? Yah r 
 mercenary! You'll leave us for a better shop 
 than this one, I het!" He improvised, to an im- 
 aginary guitar: 
 
 "Then she left us for a better shop than this one, 
 Then she chucked the little crowd that loved her true; 
 
 Though the tears were in our eyes, 
 
 She forsook us for a rise, 
 She departed for a difference in the screw!" 
 
 She thought how amusing he was. "Silly 
 idiot!" she laughed. 
 
 "I don't blame you! A faithful heart is 
 broken, but what's a heart compared to < s. D.l 
 You girls were ever thus. 
 
 'Then she left us for a better shop than this one ' 
 
 Is my hated rival very handsome, Peggy?" 
 
 "A jolly sight handsomer than you," she 
 chaffed back. 
 
 "Go on! If you'd met me first, he wouldn't 
 have had a chance, not a glimmer. I can read 
 your secret in your gaze you struggle, Peg- 
 gums. That's what you do, you struggle between 
 
 love and lucre. Lucre cops the pool, but " 
 
 "You'll cop a box on the ears if you don't look 
 out," she giggled. 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 151 
 
 "Your fair hand smite me, that little rose- 
 leaf?" 
 
 "The little rose-leaf can come down pretty 
 hard, I can tell you," she said, enjoying herself. 
 She brought the palm of her hand in contact with 
 his cheek, smartly enough to be a pretended blow, 
 lightly enough to be a caress. His sprightliness 
 appealed to her warmly; she regretted that, at 
 the next instant, her cue was spoken. "Hullo!" 
 She darted. "Bang don't forget!" 
 
 It was five minutes to ten when she returned 
 to the dressing-room and tore off her costume. 
 She rubbed the cocoa-nut oil on her make-up, 
 and snatched at the grease-soaked rag, and 
 plunged her face into the basin, exhilaratingly 
 conscious that the other occupants of the room 
 knew the explanation of her frantic haste. His 
 knock was heard before she was ready, and some- 
 body cried, "There he is, let me hook you, dear!" 
 with enthusiasm. 
 
 They sped down the alley, into Caledonia 
 Road, in high spirits. Exchanging pleasantries 
 in the darkness of the Market Square, her escort 
 lunged at invisible opponents, and challenged 
 her to race him to the pavement. It was much 
 jollier than if she had been making the expedi- 
 tion alone. 
 
 "Nelson! behave yourself," she laughed as they 
 
152 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 panted to the theatre steps. Then, at the box 
 office, "May we go in?" she asked hurriedly; 
 "we're at the Grand." The delay while their 
 cards were submitted to the local or the touring 
 business manager both gentlemen were in the 
 buffet was exasperating. 
 
 The last act was two-thirds over as the late- 
 comers stole into the dress circle and descried 
 vacant seats in a bad position, which were to be 
 reached without disturbing anyone. The lights 
 in the auditorium were lowered ; but even so, she 
 could see that the pit and pit-stalls were packed; 
 and a few seconds later a burst of applause over- 
 head informed her, by its volume, that the upper 
 tiers were crowded too. She was deliciously 
 proud of her engagement as Nelson nudged her, 
 whispering, "What a house!" 
 
 Her remembrance of the manuscript was too 
 hazy for her to grasp the situation on the stage 
 at once, but soon one of the characters exclaimed, 
 ""The Colonel is coming back!" and she knew she 
 was to see Galbraith. Vaguely she was conscious 
 of a stir of discomposure among the people on 
 her other side ; almost at the same instant, an in- 
 articulate but ironical greeting from the gallery 
 struck her with dismay; and then Galbraith en- 
 tered, treading the stage with slow uncertainty, 
 the ponderous gait of an experienced actor fight- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 ing to conceal intoxication. He spoke, and she 
 heard him dizzily; the words that he uttered 
 reached her through a fog of horror, muffled, in- 
 coherent. Jeers from the gallery accompanied 
 him. She held her breath, and perceived that the 
 other actors on the stage were gagging, antici- 
 pating their cues, doing their utmost to accelerate 
 the conclusion of his scene. Brief as it was, it 
 seemed to her as if it would never end. The gal- 
 lery approved his exit by shrill whistles. 
 
 "This comes of helping a pal!" she gasped. 
 She turned to Nelson, trembling. Her face wag 
 colourless, it startled him. For an instant he had 
 been almost as aghast as she, but his own con- 
 sternation had yielded to amusement; he had 
 failed to realise the fiancee's point of view. Now 
 he strove to look sympathetically indignant, and 
 patted her arm consolingly. 
 
 She was as furious as if she had been Ross 
 himself; she quivered with a sense of personal 
 injury. Mortified, she wished that Nelson had 
 come in on the previous evening, or on the mor- 
 row ; she had foreseen his returning to tell every- 
 one how magnificently the show had gone, and, 
 of all nights, Galbraith must select to-night to 
 make a fiasco of it 1 So little attention could she 
 pay to the rest of the act, that she was aware of 
 nothing more than Ross's attitude as the curtain 
 
154 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 fell; and in the streets, during a walk that was 
 very dull, she kept insisting, "Of course, it was 
 nothing to do with the piece, you know; they ate 
 the piece it was only Galbraith they were guy- 
 ing!" 
 
 For once she was impatient to write to Tat- 
 ham. She wrote again on the following day and 
 gave him such a highly-coloured account of Gal- 
 braith's condition that he wondered sadly how 
 the fourth act of the play could have been 
 reached at all. From the man he heard nothing; 
 nor did he add to abasement by inquiries. But 
 from the provincial columns of the theatrical 
 paper at which he had the interest to glance, he 
 learnt soon afterwards that an "excellent rendi- 
 tion of 'Colonel Forrester' was supplied by Mr. 
 Lionel Stott." 
 
 The discharged actor did not reappear in Ber- 
 ners Street. Whether he was back in London, 
 but too much ashamed to call, whether he was to' 
 be seen despairing in the professional haunts of 
 Liverpool or Manchester, or whether the work- 
 house had hidden him, Tatham had no idea. On 
 several Saturday afternoons he took his way to 
 the Strand in the hope of information, but the 
 neighbourhood revealed no more than one ac- 
 quaintance and he was relieved that their eyes 
 did not meet. Elsie Lane was entering an 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 agent's doorway. The quiet-voiced girl who a 
 few years earlier had suggested a vicarage to his 
 mind was painted like a harlot. The sight dis- 
 tressed him poignantly, the shock of it was in his 
 mood all day; and for months the remembrance 
 of the change in her moved his thoughts to sicker 
 horror than the descent of Galbraith himself. 
 
 Meanwhile resident theatrical managers in the 
 provinces awaited the arrival of London Inside 
 Out with such keen financial interest that Logan 
 Ross projected the formation of a second com- 
 pany to perform the piece, and urgent letters, 
 marked "Immediate, please forward," reached 
 Tatham from many actors and actresses with 
 whom he had been associated formerly, and from 
 many others of whom he had never before heard. 
 They pleaded for engagements, and they ap- 
 pealed to him for loans. The clerk who had sold 
 his play for fifteen pounds was entreated to 
 "extend a helping hand to less fortunate fellow- 
 artists, now that he was a dramatist enjoying 
 prosperity." 
 
CHAPTER y 
 
 ON an autumn afternoon and the first day of 
 his annual vacation, a city clerk descended from 
 a third-class compartment to the platform of 
 one of the last towns in the kingdom that any 
 rational Londoner might have been expected to 
 choose as the scene of a holiday. And as he 
 strode from the station and viewed the utilitarian 
 ugliness of the place, he beheld his boyhood too; 
 and the spirit of a time that had seemed immeas- 
 urably behind and dead beyond the hope of resur- 
 rection came floating on the murky atmosphere 
 to welcome him, lifting his spirit with a caress. 
 
 Which reveals to the mental eye that Chris- 
 topher Tatham was not a rational Londoner, as 
 "rational Londoners" are estimated by the sound 
 majority. There are moments, however, in which 
 the possession of a temperament will yield de- 
 lights unattainable by any bank balance. Ridic- 
 ulous as it might be to derive emotions from a 
 cobbled and very squalid High Street, and tall 
 chimneys that belched black smoke into a dismal 
 sky, this tripper was more moved by the pros- 
 
 Ul 
 
V THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 157 
 
 pect than if he had tripped for "a week in Gay 
 Ostend." 
 
 In a shop window that he passed, a playbill of 
 his drama was suspended, above mounds of mar- 
 garine ; on a hoarding, a crudely executed poster 
 depicted a wildly sensational episode in the third 
 act. The quotation from the drama, printed 
 beneath the picture in striking capitals, was un- 
 familiar to him. What had brought him to the 
 town? No affection for the piece, certainly, yet 
 certainly a strong curiosity about it. Never had 
 he witnessed a performance of this play, which, 
 thanks to the expert's cuts and changes, had 
 achieved such popularity that scores of struggling 
 players imagined its author to be prosperous. 
 For once he meant to see it. He didn't know 
 that he was particularly wishful to see Ross ; he 
 was not sure that he would announce his pres- 
 ence to the gentleman. On the journey, his in- 
 tention had been to pay for a low-priced seat this 
 evening and to proceed to Sweetbay on the mor- 
 row vaguely it was his intention still. But as 
 he walked, he was increasingly aware of the 
 past's embrace in the grim manufacturing spot 
 svhose like he had not trodden since a stage-door 
 slammed behind him for the last time. Half de- 
 riding the idea, half yielding to it, he began in 
 the neighbourhood of the margarine to ask him- 
 
158 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPEB 
 
 self whether he might not pass as many as three 
 or four days of his holiday here. 
 
 His pace slackened. If he were, indeed, to 
 remain for more than a night, the Black Bull 
 would be too expensive for him, and he must seek 
 a lodging-house instead. He felicitated himself 
 that the bag he carried had been packed in ig- 
 norance of railway connections his freedom was 
 unfettered in a sufficiency of shirts. But he had 
 no idea where the lodgings lay, and he remem- 
 bered well that bags had a habit of developing 
 weight while one explored. The Black Bull 
 booked him after all. 
 
 It had been advertised as a "Family and Com- 
 mercial Hotel," but he saw only the commercials 
 when he dined, and failed to enjoy their table 
 manners. Practical men, these "travellers," cast 
 upon the unlovely scene by no caprice, and eager 
 to do good business and be gone, yet Mr. Tatham 
 cavilled at their company. Partly it may have 
 been so poor is the texture of our reasons when 
 examined I because, in moments, he was con- 
 scious how widely they would grin at him, could 
 they see into his sentimental mood. 
 
 If he had lingered for apple-and-blackberry 
 tart, instead of rising so speedily for a stroll and 
 a cigarette, his errant footsteps would not have 
 brought him to the illuminated frontage of the 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 Theatre Royal and Opera House within a few 
 minutes of its doors opening; and if he had 
 reached it some moments later than he did, Mr. 
 Logan Ross, who was exchanging financial 
 opinions with the red-faced local business man- 
 ager before proceeding to a dressing-room to don 
 the immaculate flannels and "wing" collar in 
 which he leapt on to the stage from a punt, would 
 not have started and halloed. As it was, the ex- 
 cursionist found himself shaking a large cordial 
 hand, and trying to convey that his arrival in the 
 town was quite unconnected with play-going, in 
 fact purely fortuitous and unforeseen, almost 
 before he realised what had happened. 
 
 Ross didn't write grateful letters, Ross didn't 
 say, "You're making a small fortune for me, God 
 bless you !" but Ross was unf eignedly friendly in 
 his greeting. He exclaimed that he had been 
 wondering for months why the excursionist had 
 "never turned up," and presented him to the 
 local business manager as "my friend, Mr. Tat- 
 ham, the author of the piece." And the local 
 business manager said, "Pleased to meet you, 
 Mr. Tatham," with deference. The author of 
 the most psychological play that ever deserved 
 cultured encomiums and ran in the West End 
 for a fortnight had never heard the note of re- 
 spect that weighted the local business manager's 
 
salutation to the author of London Inside 
 
 "You're coming in to see the show, Mr. Tat- 
 ham?" he asked, as one who craved a favour* 
 
 "Well, yes," Tatham admitted, "I did mean 
 to," 
 
 "He hasn't been near us since we've been out. 
 |What do you think of that?" said Ross. "You 
 can find a box for Mr. Tatham, can't you, 
 Fischer? Well, I must bolt, old chap! Come 
 round afterwards ; come round to my room. So 
 long!" 
 
 Mr. Fischer, with alacrity, found a box; Tat- 
 ham sat in it in state. Every member of the cast 
 threw a glance of curiosity towards it within two 
 minutes of appearing on the stage; the eyes of 
 every actor and actress sought his face surrepti- 
 tiously throughout the evening, eager to divine 
 his impressions. 
 
 And the piece went amazing : stupendous were 
 the cheers and whistles. The fervid mass of oper- 
 atives, small shopkeepers, mechanics, the rows of 
 villa residents in the circle, where the ladies' at- 
 tire approached the smartness of semi-evening 
 dresses, were out for pleasure. No task of theirs 
 to query whether such an "accumulation of stag- 
 gerers" could happen to any one hero in real life ; 
 they did not go to the theatre to remember real 
 life a strenuous or dreary affair at the best. 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 161 
 
 Whole-heartedly they paid for theatre tickets 
 to see life falsified, as Belgravia, and Blooms- 
 bury, and Balham paid for theatre tickets and, 
 library subscriptions to see life falsified. More 
 unsophisticated than Londoners, they were to be 
 charmed by falsehoods more highly coloured; 
 but, less self-conscious, they told no falsehoods 
 to themselves they did not seek to disguise their 
 stolid indifference for all the arts by thinking 
 they were art devotees because they enjoyed go- 
 ing to the play. And the gale of mirth when a 
 fly-catcher stuck to the low comedian a gener- 
 ous soul who kept pretending that he couldn't 
 detach himself from it for as long as the last 
 little girl in the pit would titter 1 And the storm 
 of execration for the villain! And the appetite 
 for refreshments insatiable I "A triumph for 
 all concerned," as the local Advertiser had stated 
 in its criticism. 
 
 But The Post's notice had yet to appear and 
 on the previous evening the "triumph" had de- 
 jected The Post's representative even more pro- 
 foundly than most of the performances that it 
 was her novel duty to attend when no one else on 
 the staff was free to go. Very happily and 
 proudly had she joined the staff a few months 
 earlier; it was the first opportunity that she had 
 found to earn a salary, though her pen had 
 
16 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 brought small cheques to her time and again. 
 iVery happily, too, had she learnt that it would 
 sometimes be her task to "do" the theatre. To 
 write dramatic criticism how interesting! It 
 had been with a shock that she realised, instructed 
 by a blue pencil and the powers, that locally 
 "dramatic criticism'* meant indiscriminate praise. 
 "What use is that?" she had dared, dismayed. 
 "It's useful to the advertisement columns," she 
 was answered; "it's what's expected. See?" 
 
 She had seen, and being a sensible young 
 woman had done her best to obey. But dramatic 
 criticism as practised on The Post had speedily 
 ceased to be interesting to her. It became detest- 
 able; and though she was not aware of the fact, 
 and though the editor-and-proprietor had as yet 
 received no more than one complaint, the per- 
 functory praise had been diluted with so much 
 truth that her feeble "best" had aroused deep 
 indignation in the mind of the manager of the 
 Theatre Royal and Opera House. "Whenever 
 that girl came in, the show would be a blank sight 
 better off without The Post's notice!" he was 
 wont to exclaim heatedly. 
 
 She was the eldest daughter of a parson in the 
 country a man who had a large family and a 
 small living, and whose embarrassments with the 
 tradespeople were not appreciably relieved by 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 163 
 
 the manuscripts which, at long intervals, he dis- 
 patched to publishers in London. Compliments, 
 but little pudding, they brought those tributes 
 to Nature, achieved in an overworked parson's 
 scanty leisure; and the compliments were not 
 uttered by his parishioners, who had barely heard 
 of them. "Squire" had received one and had 
 acknowledged it politely, if late; but "Squire" 
 had received many circulars which interested him 
 no less. Theodosia's thoughts had turned to her 
 father's neglected books, to his lifetime of thank- 
 less struggle, as she beheld the Theatre Royal 
 and Opera House rocked by enthusiasm for Mr. 
 Christopher Tatham's melodrama, and there had 
 been bitterness in her heart for Mr. Christopher 
 Tatham. She had pictured him; and his jaunty 
 self-satisfaction had incensed her more still. The 
 moneyed cad of her imagination her fancy por- 
 trait was, unconsciously, inspired by a shrinking 
 horror of the red-faced business manager had 
 been contrasted with the figure of a scholar bowed 
 over the "study" table in a poverty-ridden home. 
 Poor "study"! When she was rich, Theodosia 
 meant to endow it with an armchair that was 
 comfortable, and a lamp that wasn't a curse, and 
 a screen to keep the draught off that burdened 
 back. It was not Miss Moore's function as a 
 dramatic critic to think of furniture and lamps 
 
in a parsonage thirty miles from the low com$- 
 dian and his fly-catcher; it was not discreet or 
 fair of her to do it ; but she was only twenty- four 
 years old, and the evening was a crisis in her new 
 career the "critic" had suppressed sincerity so 
 long that suddenly it burst its dam. 
 
 She revolted. And after she went back to her 
 lodging in King Street she wrote. She wrote a 
 criticism that would never have been passed in 
 the office of The Post if the editor-and-proprietor 
 hadn't been in Blackpool, and the subordinate 
 that reigned in his stead hadn't nodded on press 
 night. When it was too late she found the criti- 
 cism rather startling herself. Proprietorial dis- 
 pleasure looked to her very near at hand, for Mr* 
 Judd's absence was to be but brief. 
 
 Now, on the morning after Tatham's arrival 
 in the town, some eight hours after he had parted 
 from an elated and convivial Ross in that gentle- 
 man's "diggings," he opened a nice clean copy of 
 The Post in the "smoke-room" of the Black Bull 
 and was stung by what "Footlights" had written. 
 It stung him, not because "Footlights" jeered at 
 his "dramatic triumph," but because "Footlights" 
 quite unwarrantably assumed him to be a suc- 
 cessful person perpetrating similar trash habit- 
 ually, and with complacence. (Here Theo- 
 dosia's limited knowledge of the theatre had led 
 
POSITION OF PEGGY HARPEB 165 
 
 her astray.) Thinking of the corner drawer 
 again, he smarted to see himself referred to as 
 the "proud author of London Inside Out" 
 
 Resentment was in his mind, and a supply of 
 the hotel stationery stood alluringly beside him. 
 He was still young enough to succumb to it, He 
 wrote a sarcastic correction to "Footlights" too 
 sarcastic, he w r as afraid, after the letter was 
 posted. A rebuke in good humour might have 
 been more effective. Indeed, as his temper sub- 
 sided and he wandered among lodging-houses, 
 seeking a couple of rooms neither too dear nor 
 too dirty, he began to think that he might have 
 committed a mistake in remonstrating at all. 
 But he had no suspicion, of course, that he had 
 made a second mistake in addressing his critic 
 as "Dear Sir." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 HAVING now ascertained the names of the 
 streets in which "professionals" were offered a 
 "home from home, at moderate terms," he de- 
 cided to avoid them, lest he stumbled on a house 
 that sheltered a memher or members of the 
 London Inside Out company. He realised that 
 he did not yearn to revert to the past in all its 
 phases; he wished for selected features of the 
 past. To linger in the wings once more for a 
 few evenings would be pleasant enough; but 
 since he had seen the performance, the chances 
 of the low comedian or the villain proving con- 
 genial in the parlour looked to him remote. 
 
 People had praises to bestow on King Street, 
 and to King Street he bent his steps. Cards in 
 the miniature bay windows, on either side, an- 
 nounced "Apartments" frequently, but brief in- 
 terviews on doorsteps revealed always that this 
 was a big name for a small bedroom. The gen- 
 eral requirement of King Street appeared to be 
 a young man engaged in business, and prepared 
 to enjoy- a tea-supper in the kitchen. However, 
 
 166 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 107 
 
 at No. 43, he was recommended to try Mrs. 
 Leake's, the double-fronted house further up, 
 and at Mrs. Leake's his quest concluded. 
 
 Having been offered two little ground-floor 
 rooms for less money than he paid for one at an 
 inconvenient altitude in Berners Street, he hadn't 
 done badly after all. He removed his port- 
 manteau from the Black Bull, left his razor strop 
 hanging on the curtain hook, ate a fried chop, 
 and went to the theatre. 
 
 And at the theatre Theodosia had provoked 
 excitement. He learnt it as soon as he entered 
 Ross's dressing-room learning primarily that 
 Ross hadn't come to a malodorous hole like this 
 to be taught the way to act. The statement was 
 reiterated with a redundance of adjectives. It 
 !was manifest that, personally, Ross was more 
 incensed by the impudence that dismissed his his- 
 trionic capabilities with mirth than by the diatribe 
 upon the play; but he waxed informative by de- 
 grees in front of a looking-glass, while he 
 smeared his face with the hues of youth. 
 
 "Jumped-up young idiot!" said Ross. "How 
 'does the piece go you were in last night, how 
 does the piece go?" His narrative was delayed 
 by expletives. "Rotten amateurs getting two- 
 pence a week on a thing that calls itself a 'news- 
 paper,' trying to teach an experienced actor whaf 
 
168 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 fo <3o, with a partf . . . Well, Picton's fed up 
 svith it it isn't the first time he's been round to 
 the office and stopped his ad. 'Accident be 
 damned!' said Picton. 'Think I advertise for the 
 public to be told they're a pack of fools to come 
 to the show? Not muchl' said Picton. 'Suppose 
 1 want to hear what your gory critic's opinion is? 
 I don't give a rush for the gory opinion, one way 
 or the other! .What the critics are let in for is 
 to do the show a bit of good, aren't they? If I 
 pay for ads, I've the right to expect reciprocity, 
 haven't I?'" 
 
 "That's one way of looking at it," said the 
 author. 
 
 "It's the only *way of looking at it, my boyj 
 the editor knew that very well matter of busi- 
 ness. Didn't attempt to defend himself, kept 
 Saying it was an 'error.* Picton behaved very 
 jvell about it. As he said, if it had been a first 
 offence he might have accepted the apology, but 
 it wasn't; it's been going on for a long while, it 
 was time for him to put his foot down. . . Do 
 you see my moustache anywhere about? , . . He 
 wouldn't listen to any palaver at all withdrew 
 his ad then and there, quietly and firmly, like a 
 gentleman. There's been a message sent round 
 to-night: the girl's got the sack, and the editor 
 Bays that the show shall have his hearty attention 
 
in the future ; but Picton ain't going back on his 
 word, and I don't blame him. Where the devil's 
 the white hard varnish gone? I've been so upset 
 over this thing all day not for my own sake, 
 for yours, my boy ! that, 'pon my word, I don't 
 know what I'm doing." 
 
 "What girl?" asked Tatham. "Was it a girl, 
 then!" 
 
 "Don't I keep telling you it was a girl ? Judd, 
 the boss, was away, I hear. Only got back this 
 morning, and was in a blue funk before Picton 
 went in; he knew he'd lost an ad as soon as he 
 Saw his blessed rag to-day. 'Tearing passion to 
 (tatters' me ? That's what I made my reputation 
 on, eh ? If there's a thing I do pride myself on, 
 it's my restraint. They didn't half like me at the 
 [Rotunda, did they? I didn't get a return date 
 in Leicester simply and solely, I pledge you my 
 word, on the artistic merit of my own perform- 
 ance ! 'Tearing passion to tatters' ? It's too silly 
 to talk about." 
 
 While he continued to talk about it, and it was 
 the staple subject of his discourse throughout the 
 evening, it was apparent that the journalist's 
 dismissal was a point that had made absolutely 
 no impression on his mind. On the business man- 
 ager's and Mr. Picton's it was impressed, Tat- 
 ham perceived later they spoke of it with lively 
 
170 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 satisfaction; but, fluently as Ross discussed the 
 criticism, when all but the buffet lights were out, 
 and glass succeeded glass, the critic's loss of her 
 berth was a feature of the affair upon which he 
 tad no remark to make. He was not heartless, 
 he would have put his name to almost any sub- 
 scription list that was brought to him, and as 
 he hadn't failed to remind Tatham he had com- 
 passionately, and against his better judgment, 
 engaged Galbraith. But he was an actor. Pass- 
 ing his life in the most precarious calling in the 
 world, among men and women who seldom dared 
 to expect to retain any engagement for a longer 
 period than three or four months, a girl's loss of 
 employment seemed to him as commonplace as 
 a wet day. He was honestly surprised at Tat- 
 ham's reference to it, when they left the theatre 
 together. 
 
 "I daresay she'll soon get shopped somewhere 
 else," he said. "You don't mean to say you're 
 worrying about that?" 
 
 "It's a serious thing getting the sack ; I know* 
 what it means." He wished that he hadn't writ- 
 ten to her, wondered if she held him partly re- 
 sponsible for what had happened. 
 
 "Well, we all know what it means !" 
 
 "It's not the same thing to lose a temporary 
 engagement as to lose a permanent job. Per- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 171 
 
 haps she expected to remain on the paper for" 
 years. . . . And, after all, a great deal of what 
 she said was true ; I'm not talking about the act>- 
 ing what she said of the piece. We know what 
 the piece is, ourselves." 
 
 "Piece is a property, old man," said Ross, who 
 was in much better spirits since the dalliance in 
 the buffet. "And it's going to be a bigger boom 
 still, it's going to be a money-maker for years to 
 come. If you can only keep the game up, you'll 
 be all right. Look here, if anybody wants to 
 know your terms for another piece as good, you 
 ask me! Don't sell your next piece for fifteen 
 quid, Tatham. Come to me, I'll give you the 
 tip. Your name's known to-day, my boy 
 they're asking about you in the provinces." He 
 added diplomatically, "Of course, they don't 
 know how much work Z put in on the scrip I" 
 
 Tatham unbosomed himself. "I loathe the 
 muck. I wouldn't write another thing like it 
 unless I were starving. Besides, I don't think 
 I could! . . . I'm working for London." 
 
 They proceeded in silence for a few moments, 
 
 "Between you and I, perhaps you're right," 
 Koss admitted. "It doesn't matter about it's be- 
 ing 'muck' if the public don't know any better, 
 why should we care? But I'm not sure it's in 
 you to do the trick again, either; you might strike 
 
a plot, Eut you'd go all wrong in the way you 
 worked it. And, of course, a good half of th 
 success of this is due to my performance the 
 part suits me. Yes, I should say lighter stuff for 
 the West End would be more in your line if you 
 can get your foot in. I don't know that this is 
 going to help you, though." 
 
 Tatham turned a slow stare upon him,. "What 
 do you mean? Do you mean it's going to hinder 
 me?" 
 
 "Well, the West End managements have 
 heard of it don't make any mistake about that; 
 and they're going to hear of it more still, I prom- 
 ise you! They're precious sidey in the West 
 End, old chap sneer their important heads off 
 at this sort of show, though they're often sick 
 with envy to think of the business it's doing. 
 I shouldn't wonder if they weren't particularly 
 keen on reading a play by the author of London 
 Inside Out; they may think you aren't class 
 enough for their high-and-mighty houses. Still, 
 you'll see; it's only an idea very likely, I'm 
 wrong. . . . Coming in for a nightcap?" 
 
 No, he wasn't going in to-night. He strolled 
 on to King Street, wondering what foundation 
 there might be for the idea, and saw too late that 
 the wiser course would have been for him to write 
 the melodrama under a pseudonym. But who 
 
POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 173 
 
 could have conjectured that the thing was to be- 
 come so widely known? "The proud author of 
 it" he had been called this morning; to-night he. 
 was told that it might stand in his way as long 
 as he lived. Again he remembered his retort fb 
 the girl, and while he supped kept wishing that 
 his note had not gone. Of course, she was in- 
 cluding him among the forces that had made for 
 her calamity at any rate she assumed that he 
 had grinned to learn of it! They were never 
 likely to meet; she moved through his fancy as 
 a spectacled little frump; but it chagrined him 
 to reflect that somewhere in the world, till they 
 both were laid to rest, there was to be a spectacled 
 little frump who thought meanly of him. . . . 
 To write again and express his regret for what 
 had happened? That might be to make a second 
 blunder I 
 
 Miss Moore was, indeed, thinking meanly of 
 him no further away than the sitting-room over 
 his head. And the lady also repented of sarcasm 
 scribbled in answer to his own before she had 
 been discharged. She had not foreseen a reproof 
 so summary as that, or she would have answered 
 nothing. Now she reflected that the man would 
 jeer at her reply, since doubtless her punishment 
 was known at the theatre; he would jeer and 
 could afford to jeer at it. For the thousandth 
 
174 (THE POSITION OP PEGGY HARPEB 
 
 time she wished she had restrained that impulse 
 to repartee. Then for the thousandth time she 
 fried to banish Mr. Christopher Tatham, and Mr* 
 OPicton, and Mr. Judd from her mind and asked 
 terself what she was to do. 
 
 Go home? She had no reproach to fear there, 
 they would be tenderness itself. She saw her 
 father's half-humorous smile, felt his arm about 
 ner waist; she heard the girls' chorus of sym- 
 pathy and indignation; she would not be humil- 
 iated in confessing to that group what a fool she 
 had been. But as she sat gazing at the shavings 
 in the lodging-house grate, Theodosia looked be- 
 yond the arrival and the chorus viewed the 
 straitened circumstances and the extra mouth to 
 feed; she beheld herself waiting, from week to 
 week once more, for a guinea cheque which was 
 so sorely needed to appease the butcher and which 
 a London editor took so long to write. No, she 
 couldn't go home she had to keep herself! 
 
 Somebody, a new lodger downstairs, jarred 
 the silence by knocking the ashes from his pipe 
 into the fender. 
 
 "Keep myself 1" muttered Theodosia, nodding 
 to the shavings. 
 
 How? There was no chance on The Adver- 
 tiser, she was sure of that. It meant London, 
 then! If she didn't go home, she must go to 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 170 
 
 London and try to find employment on one of 
 the few papers that had taken her short stories. 
 The most recent and the most literary of them 
 dominated her reverie. From the Editor of 
 The Aspect she had twice received an encourag- 
 ing, even a flattering letter since she had been 
 on The Post. What if she presented herself at 
 the office of The Aspect and explained her neces- 
 sities to her kindly correspondent? Surely, since 
 her tales had interested him so much, he would 
 consent to give her something to do regularly? 
 
 She might she could Mentally she turned 
 
 the leaves of The Aspect and asked herself just 
 what columns of the journal, apart from the 
 story, she was competent to write. The ques- 
 tion found no answer, nor was she sanguine of 
 the ability to produce even a short story every 
 week; but memory echoed the dulcet phrases of 
 the gracious letters, and she felt that an editor 
 who had addressed her in so benign a fashion 
 would prove a friend. 
 
 She had never stayed in London. She had 
 seen Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul's, and 
 the National Gallery, and the British Museum, 
 and had often asserted glibly that she "knew 
 London," but all at once her knowledge of it 
 shrank and left her startled. The city loomed 
 before her very vast and strange. She realised 
 
176 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 that she would find no bedroom in the buildings 
 that she had visited, and that she had no idea to 
 what quarter to direct the cabman when she 
 reached the noisy station. Her father's arm and 
 her sisters' welcome looked sweetly restful; the 
 shavings grew misty before her eyes. 
 
 She was crying, how ridiculous of her! She 
 rose impatiently, and was surprised by the tid- 
 ings of the clock. Well, she could breakfast as 
 late as she liked there was no desk to go to now. 
 Those people, those horrible people, and the cad 
 who had written the preposterous piece! One 
 day, when she had got on, she'd look back and 
 laugh at all their petty spite! 
 
 "Oh, I am so miserable!" she quavered to the 
 silence. 
 
 At war with the world, the new lodger down- 
 stairs clattered his pipe furiously again. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IT was not till the morning, when he couldn't 
 shave in comfort, that he missed the razor strop, 
 hanging to the Black Bull curtain-hook. AfteE 
 breakfast he went to fetch it; and among the 
 bottles in the bar there was a note for him. The 
 loftiness of its tone was less exasperating be- 
 cause he divined the depression of the writer, but 
 it irritated him enough for him to read the note 
 twice. It was in reading it for the second time 
 that he noticed the address at the top and learnt 
 that "T. Moore" was living in the same house as 
 himself. 
 
 To defend himself, to express his sympathy, 
 or to see what she was like? He could not have 
 said precisely why the discovery inspired him 
 yrith the wish to call upon her, but it did not 
 seem an unnatural thing to do, since they were 
 sheltered by the same roof; he could not think 
 that she herself would consider it unnatural in 
 the circumstances. To his own mind it seemed 
 more unnatural that they should be writing to 
 each other, with only a ceiling between them. 
 
 177 
 
178 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 The householder was washing the doorstep 
 when he reached it and inquired if "Miss Moore" 
 was at home. "Will you tell her I should be 
 very grateful if she would see me, please?" Mrs. 
 Leake, surprised hut docile, went upstairs drying 
 her hands, and reappeared to tell him that "Miss 
 Moore was in the drawing-room." He knocked, 
 and was bidden to "come in." 
 
 She looked very tall against the miniature 
 mantelpiece. She was standing, her back to the 
 shavings, a little curiosity and a glimmer of 
 amusement in her eyes. His own widened as they 
 met her face, and as the frump of his fancy fled 
 and left him startled, he wondered a shade breath- 
 lessly what he had come to say. 
 
 "Miss Moore?" He fumbled with his hat and 
 cane on the threshold. "I must apologise for 
 my visit, I've just received your letter. I wanted 
 to tell you that I was exceedingly sorry for 
 mine." 
 
 "Won't you sit down?" 
 
 "Thank you. I fear I was rather brusque 
 stupid; of course, it was your business to say just 
 what you felt about the play. Only a man isn't 
 necessarily 'proud* of what he has written." 
 
 "Nor a woman," she said, with the suspicion of 
 a smile. 
 
 There was a pause. He looked away from 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 179 
 
 her, and back again, and blurted, "I hope you 
 don't think / had anything to do with the com- 
 plaint that was made to the Editor?" 
 
 "I was told it was Mr. Picton who had com- 
 plained," she said evasively. The chill indiffer- 
 ence of her tone lent him no aid. It was with an 
 effort he repeated: 
 
 "But I hope you don't think I had anything 
 to do with it? I knew nothing about it till it 
 was over. Not that I could have prevented it, 
 anyhow, but I shouldn't like you to confuse the 
 author with the Management. You aren't blam- 
 ing me?" 
 
 "I've no right to blame anyone unless it's 
 myself. I wrote what I really thought about the 
 piece. That was unwise. It really isn't in the 
 least necessary to talk about it." 
 
 "I hope you'll pardon my intrusion," said Tat- 
 ham, as formally as she. 
 
 "Oh, it was very kind of you to call." 
 
 "I was fool enough to write to you, but I 
 wasn't cad enough to wish to do you any harm. 
 And I was frightfully sorry when I heard what 
 had happened. There's nothing else." He got 
 up. "I must thank you for receiving me, Miss 
 Moore." 
 
 She regarded him steadily for a moment; her 
 face softened. 
 
180 !THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "I really think it was kind of you to call, Mr. 
 Tatham," she said, putting out her hand. 
 
 "Ah!" he exclaimed; "you do believe me, don't 
 you? If I had any voice in the matter, you'd be 
 back on the paper this afternoon." 
 
 "You're very magnanimous," she smiled. "I'm 
 afraid it's a humiliating confession I'm afraid 
 my criticism was rather vulgar?" 
 
 "Not that. But rather may I say it?" 
 
 "Z mustn't object to candour." 
 
 "Rather unfair, then. You hated the play 
 I'm not surprised but wasn't it a little unfair 
 to take it for granted that I thought it a master- 
 piece, myself?" 
 
 "I don't think I said that, did I?" 
 
 "That I was 'proud' of it, that I couldn't do 
 anything better?" 
 
 "Oh, I thought you could do better. There 
 were things here and there that made me think 
 you could do ever so much better, if you cared to. 
 .That was why I I wondered." 
 
 "Looked down on me, you mean?" 
 
 She sought for euphemisms. "That was why 
 1 wondered how you could be content to write 
 that." 
 
 "I wrote 'that' for the same reason that you 
 wrote criticisms of the theatre. The work didn't 
 interest you very much, I imagine the plays that 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 181' 
 
 come here tax your patience more than your in- 
 tellect, don't they? From my own point of view, 
 I have to live." 
 
 "Ah!" She seemed about to annihilate him, 
 but checked the retort. "You won't tempt me 
 to accuse you again!" 
 
 "Accuse?" 
 
 "I could answer what you've said." 
 
 "Goon!" 
 
 "Shall I? Well, people may manage to 'live' 
 without stooping to quite such profitable work 
 as you do." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Oh, please don't ignore the 'triumph'!" 
 
 "And the rest?" 
 
 "I suppose you have written other pieces, and 
 will write more?" 
 
 "I hope so. But none of the others has ever 
 been produced and none of them made me feel 
 ashamed when I wrote it." 
 
 Again they looked at each other in silence. 
 
 "I've jumped to conclusions?" inquired the 
 
 girl. 
 
 "Frantically, since you ask the question. You 
 seem to think that one swallow makes a summer 
 you seem to think that if a piece is a success, 
 the author must be rolling in money. It wouldn't 
 
182 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 do me any good if London Inside Out ran for 
 generations." 
 
 After absorbing this, she murmured, "I'm 
 sorry I wrote in the way I did." And added 
 drily, "You're nobly avenged." 
 
 "Is it impertinence to ask whether " He 
 
 hesitated. 
 
 "Whether there's any other paper waiting for 
 me? No, Mr. Tatham, there isn't. The Post 
 appointment was the first I've had." 
 
 "It's a cowardly shame," he cried. "If I were 
 anybody I'd go and talk to the man. But it isn't 
 what you said about me he minds, of course ; it's 
 the loss of the advertisements. Well . . . what 
 are you going to do?" 
 
 "I suppose I'm going to look for something 
 else," she fenced. 
 
 "Here?" 
 
 "Oh no, there's nothing in this place. I I 
 daresay I shall go to London." 
 
 "Have you is there any prospect there?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm not afraid of the experiment. Please 
 don't take it so seriously; very likely I might 
 have had to leave The Post soon, in any case 
 one never knows. It was awfully nice of you to 
 come to see me I didn't deserve it." 
 
 There was finality in her tone. He regretted, 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 183 
 
 but accepted the dismissal. "Well, good-bye, 
 Miss Moore." 
 
 "Good-bye," she said. "And thank you again. 
 ... I'm afraid it'd be no use for me to ring, the 
 landlady wouldn't understand what it was for." 
 
 "Oh, I'm not going away," he explained. "I 
 live here." 
 
 "Here?" She was very much surprised. "In 
 this house, do you mean? Are you the down- 
 stairs " 
 
 "Yes," he said ; "I'm the 'downstairs.' I hope 
 I haven't disturbed you?" 
 
 "Oh, not in the least," she said hurriedly; "no. 
 I heard you knocking out your pipe, that's all >. 
 it was your pipe, wasn't it? But I thought you 
 were at the Black Bull?" 
 
 "For a night. Yes, it was my pipe; I'll take 
 care this evening. I'm in the town for three or 
 four days it wouldn't run to an hotel for so 
 long as that. I'm a very much less opulent per- 
 son than you fancied, not nearly so professional 
 as yourself. I'm a clerk this is my holiday." 
 
 Now if he had announced that he was a wealthy 
 amateur, Theodosia would have bowed again and 
 the interview would have ended; but because he 
 was revealed as a humble clerk she felt more 
 remorseful still for her derision of him in The 
 Post; and instead of letting him go, she smiled 
 
184. THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 the sunniest smile that she had given to him yet 
 and said, "Are you? If the world's so ungener- 
 ous to us both, we ought to be friends. Oh, I do 
 wish I hadn't been so horrid about you ! Where 
 do you live? In London? Perhaps you can tell 
 me something I want to know?" 
 
 And, instead of having descended to the par- 
 lour a minute later, he was sitting down again in 
 the drawing-room and digesting the fact that she 
 proposed to adventure London, equipped with 
 hope, a pen, and little cash. The intelligence was 
 imparted so casually his advice, obviously, being 
 sought on no weightier matter than the localities 
 of cheap furnished apartments that the counsel 
 in his mind was not easy to utter. He felt con- 
 strained, though, to urge that pens were more 
 numerous than salaries in London, and that to 
 Fleet Street her experience on Mr. Judd's organ 
 would prove no Open Sesame. 
 
 "I hate to depress you," he said, "but if you'll 
 let me speak plainly, I think it would be a far 
 better plan for you to write to the editors who 
 know you. If they can off er you anything, they 
 can tell you so by letter you needn't travel to 
 disappointments, you can find them with a 
 penny stamp. Of course, I've no right to inter- 
 fere " 
 
 "Oh, you aren't interfering!" she exclaimed 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 185 
 
 petulantly. But he felt that she repented her 
 confidence. And she was, in truth, uncomfort- 
 ably conscious of having blundered into a posi- 
 tion of little dignity. "I've no doubt you're per- 
 fectly right; what you say sounds very practical." 
 
 "Why are you wishing you hadn't told me?" 
 asked Tatham impulsively. 
 
 "What?" It was spontaneous, the quick sur- 
 prise of a woman responsive to a man's intuition. 
 "Was I? Oh, I don't know. I suppose I was 
 wondering why on earth I should have bothered 
 you about it!" 
 
 He shook his head. "You were thinking you 
 had paid me too great a compliment. I was 
 afraid you might! If I had been insincerely san- 
 guine, you'd have liked me much better." 
 
 "You're calling me a horribly ungrateful per- 
 son! So" she forced a laugh and turned to him 
 "you think the idea's very silly, do you? The 
 advice you give me is to put my pride in my 
 pocket and go back, beaten to confess I'm a 
 failure? Think before you speak! I mayn't 
 forgive you a second time." 
 
 "I think you'd do much better to go home if 
 you've no prospects and no friends in London," 
 said Tatham obdurately. "Yes." 
 
 The moment in which her eyes dwelt on him 
 seemed a very long one. 
 
186 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Well, I haven't told you quite everything; 
 I must find some work to do in London," she 
 declared. But there was no lack of forgiveness 
 in her voice, there was frank approval. "I'm 
 much obliged to you for not being insincerely 
 sanguine, all the same." 
 
 "Very well," said the man, "that point's set- 
 tled. Now let's consider where you're to live! 
 Don't you know London at all?" 
 
 "I've often been there for a day. That doesn't 
 count, I'm afraid. Is Chelsea far away? I've 
 always thought I should like to live in Chelsea; 
 it's such a pretty name, and there's the river." 
 
 "I don't exactly know how you get to Chel- 
 sea," said the Londoner vaguely. "Yes, I think 
 it is a long way off. If you're going to call on 
 editors, you'd find the West Central district more 
 convenient, I should think ; you'd be able to walk 
 to where you want to go. ... I suppose you 
 want two rooms, don't you?" 
 
 "Well, yes, I certainly do," said she, "if I can 
 afford the price. Why? Are they going to be 
 dear?" 
 
 "They're going to be much dearer than two 
 rooms here. Where Z am, I've only one. Da 
 you know, I think a boarding-house might be the 
 thing for you. It would give you a sitting-room 
 a corner of a sitting-room and it'd save 
 
POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 187 
 
 you an awful lot of trouble about your meals; 
 you'd have no things to order and you wouldn't 
 be cheated." 
 
 "Oh, that's a capital idea," exclaimed Theo- 
 dosia brightly. "You're being tremendously 
 useful, Mr. Tatham. Go on! Where am I to 
 find a boarding-house, a nice cheap one, near 
 the paper offices?" 
 
 "Well, I don't know the address of any pa- 
 per," he laughed, "except the theatrical papers, 
 but I expect the West Central district is about 
 as nice and near as you'll be able to get. You 
 can see any number of them advertised in the 
 Telegraph. I'll bring a copy in. You'll see the 
 terms too, and you can pick out something likely 
 and arrange ahead by letter. How soon do you 
 mean to go?" 
 
 "I meant to go to-morrow; I don't want to 
 waste time. My fortune's limited the longer 
 I wait before I go, the less there'll be of it when 
 I get there." 
 
 "I should wait for an answer," he insisted. 
 "If you arrived and found the house full and 
 had to drive about with your luggage on the cab, 
 looking for a place to live in, it'd be a miserable 
 day for you. It wouldn't do at all ; there are all 
 sorts of objections to it your people ought to 
 know where you'll be. I'll go and get the Tele- 
 
188 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 graph at once I daresay I can get it at the 
 station and I'll mark the suitable addresses for 
 you. Shall I?" 
 
 "You're most awfully good," said Theodosia 
 gaily. "It'd be lovely of you." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 So in the afternoon he tapped at the door 
 again, and he was aware, in betaking himself to 
 the wings later, that his day had passed with un- 
 usual swiftness. On his return he entered the 
 passage lightly, and when he banged his pipe on 
 his palm, instead of on the fender, he fell to won- 
 dering what London might have in store for the 
 girl overhead. 
 
 Also he wondered a little at the music of 
 homely English words, now that he had heard a 
 gentlewoman's voice again. How different was 
 every vowel of her vocabulary from the vowels 
 of the group he had just left ! She spoke another 
 language the language that Ross made a hor- 
 rible attempt to speak as the hero, in the mo- 
 ments when he remembered that he was supposed 
 to be well-bred and said, "It's naice of you, I'm 
 shoeah !" 
 
 Great mistake for her to go to London she 
 couldn't afford to stay there long enough to do 
 any good! Not of vital importance, though, as 
 she had people to write to she needn't starve 
 
 189 
 
190 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 when she had spent her money. Still, she was 
 hound to find town very sad and lonely: he 
 caught himself wishing that he had a married 
 sister to look after her. What, in heaven's name, 
 was it to do with him? London was full of lonely 
 girls clamouring for work they were dragging 
 their feet up and down the agents' stairs all day. 
 Xot girls like her, though! she was so different 
 
 from Again it reverted to that she was 
 
 "so different"! The image of Peggy obtruded 
 itself violently. The dishonesties of the mind are 
 innumerable: subconsciously he had striven to 
 exclude Peggy from his reflections ; he had sought 
 to keep Peggy out of sight for Peggy's own 
 sake; he felt queerly guilty and compassionate 
 towards Peggy as her shortcomings thrust them- 
 selves into a fatal comparison. He reminded 
 himself conscientiously that his appreciation of 
 Miss Moore was purely intellectual. 
 
 The next morning moved more slowly than its 
 predecessor, and Mrs. Leake, who brought no 
 enlivening message, was a disappointment to him 
 every time she entered the room. To Theodosia, 
 too, the hours were long. She divined that the 
 rain looked no less dismal from the dining-room 
 window than from her own, and knew that she 
 would find it pleasant to talk to him ; but she was 
 a foreigner in bohemia, and, for once, doubtful 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 191 
 
 of the social laws of the land she knew. She was 
 diffident of inviting the man to "come upstairs," 
 and equally afraid of seeming thankless. Yester- 
 day she had called a stranger her "friend," and 
 to-day she was ignoring his existence. Did 
 works on etiquette by members of the aristocracy 
 provide for this situation? She determined it in 
 the early afternoon, without the aid of those in- 
 valuable manuals, by inquiring through the land- 
 lady if he would come up to tea at five o'clock. 
 
 And on the following day the second post 
 brought a satisfactory letter, which civility re- 
 quired her to display. 
 
 "I've heard from the house in Torrington 
 Square," she informed him; "there'll be a small 
 room free to-morrow, so I shall go from here in 
 the morning. She wants me to let her have a 
 postcard to say whether I'm coming, or not. 
 You go to-morrow too, don't you, to Sweet- 
 bay?" 
 
 "Yes. I go all the way to London first, 
 though," he said. "I've been asking at the sta- 
 tion it'll be much quicker. We might go by 
 the same train, mightn't we? then I can look 
 after your luggage for you when you arrive." 
 
 Why not ? She admitted frankly that it would 
 be much pleasanter than travelling by herself. 
 And, by-and-by, when she went to the pillar-box, 
 
they met again in the streets. The sun was shin- 
 ing, and after the postcard was dispatched they 
 walked together, past the factories, along a white 
 road that wound between hedges to the unknown. 
 During their walk they learnt a good deal of 
 each other; and more than once Tatham asked 
 himself whether it would be the right thing to 
 mention that he was engaged. His mind re- 
 coiled from mentioning it, primarily because it 
 seemed to him that it would be as if he said, "You 
 must never aspire to marry me, you know; I 
 should be sorry for you to have any false hopes 
 let me warn you not to expect it!" Wasn't 
 she bound to realise the reason that he told her? 
 wouldn't he deserve to be most disdainfully 
 snubbed? But also he was deterred by the dread 
 of having to dilate upon the subject of Peggy to 
 her, doubting his ability to sound as enthusiastic 
 as he ought. He talked instead of his failures 
 and his ambitions. She was not bored by the 
 story of his failures; a passing reference to the 
 corner drawer hadn't sufficed for her, and her 
 interest was so vivid that they had turned back 
 from a neighbouring village and were half-way 
 home before the drawer was shut. Nor was it 
 only the girl who had questions to ask; he was 
 granted a view of the "study," and obtained sur- 
 prising glimpses of the Church as a profession. 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 193 
 
 "I should like to read some of your father's 
 books," he said. "And your stories are they 
 always signed?" 
 
 "Generally. The Aspect cuts me down to 
 initials, though 'T. M.' "T stands for 'Theo- 
 dosia'; perhaps that's why they won't print my 
 name in full, it takes up such a lot of room. I'll 
 send one to you one day, when I've done some- 
 thing I'm particularly vain of." She laughed. 
 "Then you can avenge yourself; you can call me 
 'the proud author of a silly little story/ Isn't it 
 funny, if I hadn't written that " 
 
 "Yes, I know, I've been thinking of it! If 
 you hadn't written that, I should never have 
 spoken to you. ... I suppose I might have seen 
 you through the window when you went out 
 wondered who you were 1" 
 
 "And you'd have gone on clattering your pipe 
 in comfort and have had nobody's luggage to 
 bother about to-morrow but your own. I'm won- 
 dering so hard what he's like." 
 
 He didn't say "Who?" In looking back, she 
 gave him credit for that. 
 
 "He'll be very polite," he prophesied, "if he's 
 written to you so nicely. But " 
 
 "No, don't! You were quite discouraging 
 enough the day before yesterday." 
 
 "I talked as I should have talked if you'd been 
 
my sister." Again he wished that he had a sister, 
 married, capable, urbane. 
 
 "I know. Oh, I know it'll be extraordinary if 
 anything comes of it! But " 
 
 "I don't think it'd be extraordinary if you 
 found an opening in time, but I don't see The. 
 Aspect ready to take you on the staff the mo- 
 ment you suggest it. I daresay he'll be polite 
 enough, but I'm afraid you'll walk back to Tor- 
 rington Square in the blues." 
 
 "There are more papers than one in London. 
 Everybody has to begin. How do other people 
 get on?" 
 
 "I can't tell you," said Tatham; "I haven't 
 done it." 
 
 "Haven't other women like me gone there and 
 managed to stay? Anyhow, I'm not going to 
 give in till I'm forced to I've got to do my best 
 first. Think of me besieging editors when you're 
 listening to the band on the pier!" 
 
 He was conscious that he would; hazily, too, 
 he was conscious that the interest afforded by his 
 trip had been a surprising interest, and that, in 
 retrospect, the theatre would be a less vivid im- 
 pression to him than this walk along a country 
 road. Actually, what he was to recall most often 
 was the confusion at the terminus next day and 
 her troubled face through the cab window. So 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 195 
 
 capricious is memory, which immortalises mo- 
 ments without reference to our tastes and ex- 
 pectations ! 
 
 The journey had been well enough, but at the 
 last there was difficulty about her luggage after 
 all. The porter who went to fetch it was absent 
 so long that Tatham left her and went to look 
 for him, and when the man was found, he had 
 mumbled that the trunk was missing. It was 
 discovered at the other end of the platform, after 
 the other passengers had all departed. Her 
 smile of relief was radiant, but the minutes in 
 which it had appeared that her belongings might 
 be anywhere excepting in the van had taken the 
 colour from her cheeks. 
 
 "Well, I'm all right now! Ever so many 
 thanks for everything, Mr. Tatham. I hope 
 you'll enjoy yourself at Sweetbay." 
 
 "Thanks. / hope well, you know!" 
 
 "Though I've defied your advice!" This aft- 
 ernoon her laugh was a little nervous. 
 
 "I feel much more sanguine tliis afternoon, 
 somehow," he affirmed untruthfully; "I've an 
 idea my advice'll turn out to have been wrong. 
 Then I'm to hear your news when I come back 
 next week?" The cab was moving, he kept pace 
 with it eagerly. "If you do change your address 
 before then " 
 
196 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "I shan't," she said, "before next week!" 
 And as the gates were passed and she looked 
 
 out at London, she felt less lonely for the thought 
 
 that next week she was to see him. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 IF she had written a story about them both 
 and though she didn't do it, she had half a mind 
 to write a story beginning, "The dramatic critic 
 of an obscure newspaper sat in the dress-circle" 
 nothing would have been simpler than for un- 
 toward circumstances to prevent their meeting 
 again for years: the boarding-house might have 
 proved impossible, even for the briefest of so- 
 journs, and he might have been told when he 
 called there that she had gone without leaving 
 any message. In reality, no such dramatic com- 
 plications occurred. The dinner was deplorable, 
 and the boarders were depressing, and the arti- 
 ficial cheerfulness of the proprietress was melan- 
 choly beyond words, until she gave the effort up 
 and lapsed into contemplation of her liabilities; 
 but having expected nothing better for the 
 money, Theodosia remained. 
 
 She remained, and when she had heard, with 
 a sinking of the heart, that her encouraging cor- 
 respondent of The Aspect was out of town, and 
 not due at the office for a week, her days were 
 
 197 
 
devoted to attempts to see the other editors who 
 had published her work. 
 
 At the outset she saw no further than a printed 
 interrogation form presented disconcertingly by 
 a liveried official at the entrance. The form de- 
 manded terse statements of all that she mis- 
 trusted her ability to urge at length. It was 
 displayed to her by Thursday that these impera- 
 tive demands for information were finding her 
 too docile. After she had acknowledged her in- 
 significance several times with discouraging re- 
 sults, she began to palter with the peremptory 
 inquiry, "Business?" She euphemised, she grew 
 disingenuous. Once she had the audacity to ig- 
 nore the inquiry altogether, and discovered that 
 the alarming official regarded his duty as accom- 
 plished when he had indicated the form to her, 
 caring not a row of his domestic pins whether 
 she complied with all its requirements or not. 
 
 Theodosia's earliest impression of her London 
 editors when she had stormed their thresholds 
 was that they were unaffected and rather chatty 
 gentlemen who appeared incapable of declining 
 desirable manuscripts with the dilatory tasteless- 
 ness of which she knew them to be guilty. It was, 
 for instance, sensational to remember that the 
 meek-mannered little man who tittered to her in 
 the office of Mother and Girls was the remorse- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 199 
 
 less power who had rejected every story that she 
 had offered to him during six months. So 
 sweetly, even persuasively, did he suggest her 
 "letting him see some more of her stories" that 
 it seemed until she sent one as if she were 
 destined to delight him by everything she wrote. 
 But when she explained that she wanted some 
 regular work, he "feared." She had often re- 
 flected that she could make the columns signed 
 "Lady Fervia" very much more interesting than 
 "Lady Fervia" contrived to do r and only her 
 reluctance to disparage another woman's work 
 prevented her asking the little Editor if he was 
 satisfied with them. When he inquired with a 
 simper, "And how do you like Lady Fervia's 
 stuff? I do that myself," she was glad she had 
 refrained. 
 
 Then there w r as the gentleman who explained 
 that his periodical was an object lesson to all the 
 other editors in London she was not sure but 
 what he included those in America. And there 
 was the Editor who talked enthusiastically of 
 "literature," and bewailed the ignorance of the 
 class of readers for whom he was condemned to 
 cater. He favoured her with examples of his 
 literary tastes pearls from deep thoughts and, 
 although she was a nobody, she knew that their 
 polysyllabic pretentiousness wasn't quite so ad- 
 
200 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 mirable as he thought it was. And there was the 
 good-natured, paternal Editor who counselled 
 her candidly to return to the country. 
 
 A good deal of her time was spent in waiting- 
 rooms, and she found it fascinating to try to 
 guess the business of the other occupants. The 
 black-and-white artists proclaimed their purpose 
 by the sketches that they nursed ; but she used to 
 wonder which of the disconsolate-looking com- 
 pany were the story writers, and if they were 
 professionals or amateurs, and what their fate 
 was to be when their turn was announced at last. 
 Sometimes, as she watched them, they became 
 the heroes and heroines of embryonic stories 
 themselves, and it was a regret to her that, after 
 they hurried from their seats at the summons of 
 a swooping boy, who passed his life flying up 
 and down the stairs, she didn't see them any 
 more, and was left with her little romance un- 
 finished. 
 
 One afternoon she had a conversation in a 
 waiting-room. She had sighed, "It's tedious, 
 isn't it?" and the woman had answered, "Well, 
 Tm glad of a chance to sit down!" She was 
 dressed much more expensively than Theodosia, 
 and the girl, who had assumed her to be success- 
 ful, was rather surprised by the sadness of her 
 tone. 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 201 
 
 "Are you working for the paper?" asked the 
 woman. 
 
 "No." With a vague idea of justifying her 
 presence, she added, "I had a tale in it some time 
 ago." 
 
 "Oh, fiction!" She sounded envious and in- 
 imical. "Yes, that's the best if one can do it." 
 
 "Do you think so?" It was an arresting point 
 of view. 
 
 "Anything that one can do at home !" 
 
 "It doesn't mean a salary, though one gets a 
 story taken now and then." 
 
 The sad woman was inclined to envy and dis- 
 like her less. "Have you been writing long?" 
 
 "I haven't been making a living by it very 
 long." 
 
 Both smiled. 
 
 "It's a beastly business," said the woman. 
 "I haven't been at it long, either; it's the first 
 time I've been on a paper. I'm doing the fashion 
 article." 
 
 "Is that the easiest sort of work to find?" asked 
 Theodosia eagerly. "I do so want to get some- 
 thing permanent." 
 
 "I'd advise you to do anything else instead." 
 
 "It's so tiring?" 
 
 "Oh, it's tiring, of course I've been running 
 about the West End all day ; it's the same thing 
 
202 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 every day; and when I get home, dead beat, in 
 the evening I've got to write. But it isn't only 
 that it's tiring! If your name isn't well known, 
 you can't keep yourself just by writing the ar- 
 ticles there aren't half a dozen women in Lon- 
 don who get big enough terms for their stuff to 
 do that you've got to canvass for advertise- 
 ments besides. It isn't very pleasant." 
 
 "No, I don't think I should like that," said 
 Theodosia. 
 
 "I don't think you would! especially if you 
 were doing it for a rag like this. I daresay it's 
 all right if the paper has a large circulation, and 
 the shops know it; but when I go in and say I'm 
 representing a paper they've hardly heard of, 
 it's as much as they'll do, very often, to let me 
 see their models. When I try to persuade them 
 to pay for advertisements " 
 
 "It must be loathsome!" 
 
 "One's got to live," sighed the other. "But 
 don't try canvassing if you can manage any other 
 way. It's worse still for a girl I've a friend 
 who used to do it." 
 
 "Why 'worse'?" 
 
 "Because it's men you have to see. At 
 Madame Diane's you see Mrs. Brown, but at 
 Clifford's, or Lacy and Lovell's, or any of those 
 places, it's always a cad of a man you've got to 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 203 
 
 talk to. You can imagine what it means. He 
 says, 'I'm not sure if I can give you an ad, but 
 I'll take you out to lunch if you like!' ' 
 
 An indefatigable boy, swooping like his coun- 
 terparts elsewhere, interrupted them before her 
 confidences could be continued. But when a 
 well-intentioned editor, who had not heard such 
 confidences, offered the girl an opportunity to 
 devote her energies to the advertisement columns 
 of a struggling periodical, it was by reason of 
 this conversation that she found the spirit to say 
 
 "no. 3 
 
 She found the spirit to say "no"; but she de- 
 parted from him spiritless. Few as the days 
 were, they had been weighted by many dis- 
 appointments, and it began to seem to her that 
 she had been in London a long while. Fleet 
 Street, but a week ago an avenue to fame, elo- 
 quent of Dr. Johnson's suggestion, looked now 
 the least attractive thoroughfare that she had 
 trodden, and Goldsmith's tomb no longer lured 
 her tired footsteps to the Temple. The lives be- 
 hind the curtains that fronted her attic, across 
 the railings and the branches of Torrington 
 Square, did not stir her curiosity any more : her 
 own affairs absorbed her when she sat by the 
 window. For all the magnitude of London, the 
 fraction of London that might welcome her was 
 
204 
 
 dwindling hourly, was shrinking to the limita- 
 tions of the village to which she was recom- 
 mended to return. Her thoughts were concen- 
 trated more and more upon The Aspect, but she 
 thought of it with diminished confidence; by the 
 light of bland but bootless interviews, the promise 
 of bland letters looked smaller to her. She was 
 far more nervous than sanguine when she pre- 
 sented herself at the office again and inquired if 
 her correspondent had returned. 
 
 The office of The Aspect was not imposing 
 it shrunk from observation in an alley, and 
 boasted neither a liveried doorkeeper nor dart- 
 ing boys. She addressed herself to a faded young 
 man behind a counter that looked too long for 
 him; and when he had asked her name he lifted 
 a flap in the counter unceremoniously and went 
 into the next room. 
 
 "Mr. Savile says, will you go in, please," he 
 said, reappearing. He held the glass door open 
 for her; and an elderly gentleman, whose smile 
 seemed to her to have a touch of curiosity in h\ 
 rose and shook hands with her. 
 
 "Miss Moore! How do you do? I'm pleased 
 to make your acquaintance." 
 
 "Thank you," said Theodosia. 
 
 "I'm sorry to have missed you when you called 
 before." 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 205 
 
 She sat down in an armchair, which, like all 
 armchairs in the scenes of nervous interviews, 
 had been constructed undesirably. Mr. Savile 
 smiled again, and revolving from a beautiful 
 desk that, it occurred to her, would be better 
 placed in her father's study, said, "So you've 
 come to London, Miss Moore! Er perma- 
 nently?" 
 
 "I've come chiefly to see you," she said. "It 
 Was you who wrote to me, wasn't it?" 
 
 He bowed. "I am honoured. Yes, it was I 
 who wrote to you. I am the proprietor and 
 editor of The Aspect. I was very much inter- 
 ested by your stories, Miss Moore ; I found them 
 quite out of the common very individual. And 
 have you brought something else to show me?" 
 
 "No," she acknowledged regretfully, "I 
 haven't I'm not thinking of fiction just now. 
 . . . Mr. Savile, I want to find a post I don't 
 mind what it is but I want regular work. I've 
 been on a paper already, you know, the " 
 
 "I remember," he nodded; "your first manu- 
 script came from the office. As a detail, it was 
 the stationery you wrote on that drew my atten- 
 tion to the manuscript. As a rule, the stories 
 sent in by strangers are read by the assistant 
 editor, but seeing that you weren't a novice, I put 
 yours in my pocket." 
 
206 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "I thought perhaps the stationery might do 
 some good," she laughed; "that was why I wrote 
 to you on it." 
 
 "I gave you credit for the idea at the time. 
 Your connection with the Press is er tem- 
 porarily severed?" 
 
 "Yes," she said pleasantly; "I've just been 
 discharged for incompetence." 
 
 "Oh! I am grieved to hear that." He was 
 refreshed he regarded her with genuine amuse- 
 ment. "And so you thought you might suit The 
 Aspect?" 
 
 "And so I hoped The Aspect might come to 
 my rescue. Mr. Savile, I've got to find some- 
 thing else to do! I thought of you directly; I 
 came here as soon as I arrived, and when they 
 told me you were out of town, I it wasn't a 
 nice moment at all. The street looked ever so 
 much uglier when I went out than when I came 
 in. Since then I've been trying all the editors 
 that had ever heard of me I've even tried one 
 or two that hadn't but I can't find a vacancy 
 anywhere. If you won't consider me either, my 
 journey's a failure." 
 
 "But I shall be most happy to consider any- 
 thing you send me, Miss Moore, I assure you. 
 At any time that you care to let me see a story, 
 it shall receive every attention.'* 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 207 
 
 "Yes," she said feebly. "It's very kind of you 
 to say so ... but, of course, that leaves me in 
 the same position that I was in before you were 
 good enough to see me. What I want to do is to 
 work as steadily here as I did there I want a 
 salary." 
 
 The gentleman's attentive attitude was less 
 encouraging. Shorn of friendly phrases and 
 bared to a plain unvarnished tale, his discourse 
 upon the difficulty of her enterprise was a well- 
 intentioned warning that she was unlikely to ac- 
 complish it in a month of Sundays. "What was 
 the nature of the work there?" he asked "what 
 feature of the paper did you undertake?" 
 
 She mentioned several features that she had 
 undertaken, mentioning them with no enthu- 
 siasm, since the face of The Aspect was modelled 
 on a different plan. "But sometimes I did the 
 dramatic criticism," she added, indicating his 
 opportunity. 
 
 "Mr. Pritchard is to do our first-night notices 
 in future," he said, and crushed her with a Name. 
 "So you sat in judgment, too, did you?" 
 
 "That was how I came to grief." 
 
 "Oh?" His eyes twinkled. "I hope you 
 weren't too severe?" 
 
 "Well, I wrote what I thought too candidly, 
 and the chief didn't agree with my opinion. He 
 
208 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 had no complaint to make of me in any other 
 respect, so far as I am aware, but they found me 
 shockingly incompetent as a dramatic critic." 
 
 "Ah!" He recognised that she was laudably 
 discreet as a discharged journalist. "What was 
 the play that you objected to, Miss Moore?" 
 
 "There had been several differences of opin- 
 ion," said Theodosia; "the crisis was a play called 
 London Inside Out" 
 
 "That monument of dramatic art?" He 
 laughed heartily. "And you ventured to dis- 
 approve? Dear, dear! Its fame has even 
 reached me. There's an exemplar for you if 
 you want to grow rich by authorship, leave liter- 
 ature alone and write masterpieces like London 
 Inside Out" 
 
 "Ah!" she murmured. "But I'm not aspiring 
 to grow rich yet, I'm only ambitious to earn a 
 living." 
 
 In no other office had the conversation been so 
 prolonged as here. Mr. Savile's questions led 
 her to speak of her parentage ; he referred again 
 very warmly to her work ; and by-and-by she was 
 able to gather that the journal was not quite so 
 flourishing a property as she had supposed. It 
 proved to be by no means a dejecting visit, al- 
 though definitely he said little more than that he 
 would be glad to take a short story from her at 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 209 
 
 the price of a guinea as often as she could offer 
 to him one that he found suitable. There was a 
 tardy allusion to a possible development of the 
 paper a mere hint that he might perhaps be in 
 a position to discuss a different arrangement a 
 little later on; and, vague as the hint had been, 
 it acquired exciting promise when she inquired 
 presently whether he, like the others, counselled 
 her to beat a retreat and was answered, "Oh, 
 well, unless you'd find it more convenient to re- 
 turn, I I think I should remain in town for the 
 next few weeks. Stay in Torrington Square and 
 write some stories ! Anything I can publish shall 
 be paid for on acceptance." 
 
 It was the longest and it was the most satis- 
 factory of her experiences. That evening she 
 went to the little post-office round the corner 
 with the first truly hopeful letter that she had 
 sent home since she reached the strange land; 
 and next day when she woke, it was luxurious to 
 remember that she wasn't forced to go out. She 
 projected a tale about a girl like herself in Fleet 
 Street; and, excepting for the luncheon interval, 
 she spent the morning and most of the afternoon 
 in writing some of a tale about a totally dissimi- 
 lar girl on a farm. She was beginning to lose 
 confidence in the girl and her own abilities, and 
 even in the exciting hint, when a bang at the 
 
210 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 door preluded an announcement : "A Mr. Tat- 
 ham was harskin for her." 
 
 She thrust a pin through a hat, and hurried. 
 The pleasure was vivid in the passage, the ques- 
 tions were quick. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 She smiled and nodded reassuringly. "I'm 
 all right. How sunburnt you've got!" 
 
 "You haven't been having a bad time? you've 
 been comfortable?" 
 
 "No yes," she laughed. "Shall we go int - 
 the Square? there's nowhere to talk in here." 
 
 The key that should have lain on the hatstand 
 wasn't to be seen, but they went across to the 
 gate and stood waiting for someone inside to 
 notice them. The moments were so few before 
 a child ran over the lawn at her signal and let 
 them in, that it was surprising to realise how 
 much he had contrived to ask and to hear on the 
 kerb. 
 
 "So it looks hopeful, doesn't it?" she concluded 
 gaily. 
 
 "Hurrah!" He wanted to grip her hand 
 again, to slip his arm through hers, as they saun- 
 tered along the path. "I was all wrong; it's a 
 good thing you wouldn't listen to me." 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Oh, but you said you thought you were 
 wrong so you were right!" 
 
 "Yes, I hedged shamefully, didn't I? I am 
 so glad; I've wondered every day. And the 
 house have you anybody to talk to?" 
 
 "It'll do to go on with. No, there's nobody 
 to say much to ; but there wasn't anybody at Mrs. 
 Leake's before you came. Oh, it's dull, of course 
 one can feel much lonelier among the wrong 
 people than all alone but my room's not bad, 
 and I often come and sit in here. You said the 
 Square would make it nicer for me, didn't you? 
 After Fleet Street on a hot afternoon the key 
 has been a boon and a blessing. At the other 
 end, if you half shut your eyes and take care 
 which way you look, you can almost think it's 
 country. When did you come back ? you haven't 
 come from the City so early?" 
 
 "I came back this afternoon. No, I don't go 
 hopping again till to-morrow. I thought I'd 
 call at once, in case there was anything I could 
 do in case anything was wrong." 
 
 Her smile said "Thank you" prettily. . . . 
 "Well, you don't tell me if you've enjoyed your- 
 self? Did you leave your mother all right?" 
 
 "My mother was a good deal changed," he 
 said thoughtfully; "she looks her age now. No, 
 that isn't it! she always looked her age; but she 
 
!!12 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 usedn't to talk like it, she usedn't to dress like it 
 I usedn't to remember how old she was. Now 
 she doesn't pretend any more. She seems to 
 have resigned herself to old age all at once. Of 
 course everybody would say she was quite right, 
 but but her having done it all at once made it 
 rather pathetic to me to see. . . . No, I didn't 
 enjoy myself particularly better than you've 
 done. It's a pity The Aspect man wasn't in town 
 when you arrived, it would have spared you a lot, 
 eh? You've been miserable sometimes?" 
 
 She gave a shrug. "It wasn't so bad where 
 I had had some work taken that gave me some- 
 thing to say as I went in. The last day or two, 
 when I wasn't sure where to go I didn't like it 
 then! I asked the way to some paper that didn't 
 look too unlikely, too heavy or distinguished, and 
 when I reached the office I walked on! There 
 was something about the doorway or the stair- 
 case that seemed to say it was no use going in. 
 I looked at shop windows first. Have you come 
 across doors like that?" 
 
 "All the stage doors up West!" he said. 
 "Well, you're going to stay, after all?" 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 "So do I! On Saturdays I only hop for half 
 the day; if I might come on Saturday afternoon, 
 I could show you places I could show you the 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 213 
 
 three places in London where a cup of coffee is 
 to be had; one of them's near Fleet Street, and 
 
 it's shabby, but cheap. I " Again he was 
 
 daunted by the social question. They had sat 
 down, and he scratched hieroglyphics with his 
 stick on the gravel. "I wish you knew more 
 about me," he faltered. 
 
 Theodosia said, "I know you're my friend." 
 
 "I am. I'd like to be a very real friend to you 
 if you'll let me. It doesn't sound as if it meant 
 much a clerk in the City but if I could do 
 anything for you, I'd do it like a shot." 
 
 "I'm sure you would." 
 
 "I've never had a friend." 
 
 "Before!" said the girl gently. 
 
 Tatham looked beyond the railings, seeing no 
 answer to the question. It was instinct, not rea- 
 son, that urged him to declare his engagement, 
 and his mind groped helplessly for the casual 
 phrase. What tangible difference did it make? 
 Was he to be forbidden friendship because he 
 was engaged to be married? . . . Instinct re- 
 iterated that she must be told. He couldn't see 
 why, but he ceased to rebel against instinct. 
 Turning to her, reluctantly for the first time, he 
 stammered : 
 
 "You don't think I oughtn't to be friends with 
 you because I'm engaged, do you?" 
 
214 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 Suddenly he seemed to her remote even while 
 she too asked of herself what tangible difference 
 it made. The instant impulse of her sex was dis- 
 simulation ; but deeper, and more significant, was 
 something in her intimating that the moment was 
 painful for him. She realised that the moment 
 was painful for him, and that he was at her 
 mercy, though her brain acknowledged nothing 
 to account for his being at her mercy, nor to ex- 
 plain the strange aspect of the moment. 
 
 "You don't think I oughtn't to be friends with 
 you because I'm engaged, do you?" 
 
 "Why should I?" She smiled. It appeared 
 to her that she had fulfilled her intention and 
 answered brightly. To him it seemed that a 
 shadow fell between them. 
 
 "That's what I thought you'd say." 
 
 "I should like to meet her." 
 
 "I should like you to, very much." The 
 shadow was darkening; why was he being driven 
 to lie? He added with intense relief, "She's 
 away now, on tour." 
 
 "Do you mean she's an actress?" 
 
 "Yes. We've been engaged for years." 
 
 "That's all the nicer in one way you must 
 know each other so well." 
 
 "Oh yes." 
 
 "And she can understand your work." 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Oh yes," he repeated, labouredly enthusiastic. 
 "Of course, that's that's a great thing." 
 
 Not because she saw that he was more to her 
 than she admitted not because she knew the 
 man and didn't know the girl simply because 
 she was a woman, it was to the man that her 
 sympathy went out. Maternally she was sorry 
 for his blunder. "Maternally" is just. But from 
 that point she paltered with perception, averting 
 her eyes from what she didn't wish to see. She 
 didn't wish to see that, since he was to marry a 
 girl who was unsuited to him, companionship 
 might prove in the long run a mistaken kindness. 
 His loneliness cried to her. By no means guilt- 
 ily, by no means selfishly, she was eager to miti- 
 gate the loneliness. 
 
 In the road behind them a piano-organ hurled 
 forth an interruption too strident to be ignored, 
 and after her start she welcomed it: "There's 
 a procession of them all the time; I don't know 
 why the notice-board that says they aren't al- 
 lowed in the Square isn't taken away it seems 
 silly to leave it there 1" 
 
 They moved to another seat, and the tension 
 was past. On both sides there was an argument, 
 ostensibly impregnable the eternally delusive 
 argument which ignores the fact that man and 
 woman's friendship is the one true and safe 
 foundation for their love. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Miss PEGGY HAEPER was to become Mrs. 
 Tatham in about tbree months' time. More than 
 eight months had gone by since Tatham paid his 
 first visit to Torrington Square ; and in the mean- 
 while he had stood by a grave in the Sweetbay 
 cemetery, and the proprietress of a Sweetbay 
 boarding-house had begun to forget her resent- 
 ment of the "upset" occasioned by a boarder's 
 dying in the house. 
 
 The necessity for proposing that the engage- 
 ment should materialise, now that his salary 
 would suffice for matrimony on such lines as were 
 familiar to the Harpers, was not the only thing 
 that the interval had displayed to Tatham. Pri- 
 marily he viewed the fact that he loved another 
 woman, and with all his soul he regretted that he 
 had not summoned the courage to ask Peggy to 
 release him directly the truth was clear. Instead, 
 he had denied himself Miss Moore's companion- 
 ship in many hours when he had longed for it, 
 
 217 
 
218 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 He had denied it to himself now for six weeks 
 on end, and found the applause of conscience in- 
 adequate as a substitute. Conscience, indeed, 
 tempered its applause with no little censure at 
 this period. He should have been frank with 
 Peggy! He should have been frank with her 
 last autumn he should have been frank with her 
 long before that! Conscience, or common sense 
 affirmed that he should have been frank with her 
 before they had been engaged a week. In look- 
 ing back, it seemed that it would, once, have been 
 a fairly easy thing to do. It seemed that it would 
 have been, comparatively, an easy thing to do at 
 almost any time prior to his mother's death. 
 Afterwards Only the night after the fu- 
 neral, he remembered that Mrs. Harper had let 
 fall something cheerily and horribly significant! 
 He did not see what he could, in decency, have 
 done after his mother died; from that point, it 
 appeared to him, the marriage had been in- 
 evitable. 
 
 He made these reflections again as he trav- 
 elled on the Tube to Islington, the locality of 
 Mrs. Harper's latest "rooms." It was Sunday, 
 and the girl, once more touring, was due, at some 
 hour to-day, from Brighton. When Liverpool 
 Road was reached and the door had been opened, 
 a theatrical hamper blocking the passage showed 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 219 
 
 him that she had arrived already, and on the first 
 floor he learnt that she had preceded him by only 
 a few minutes. 
 
 "Hallo, Chris," she cried, "here I am!" 
 She greeted him in high spirits. Although she 
 hated the bother of letter-writing when she was 
 away, she was always glad to see him on her 
 return she would have been very dull in Lon- 
 don "without a boy to talk to." And she was 
 glad that she was going to be married. It was 
 true that, pestered, or taken to task by Naomi 
 Knight last year, she had said that it "didn't hurt 
 being engaged, and that it was nice to have some- 
 one to pay her bus fares when she was in town"; 
 but now, since his mother had "popped off and 
 he had all his screw to himself," she contem- 
 plated the matter from a different point of view. 
 To remember that she would have to go on work- 
 ing for only a few months longer had exhilarated 
 her more highly every time she dwelt upon it; 
 and privately she was of the opinion that a 
 briefer interval between his bereavement and the 
 wedding would have met the case. 
 
 "Well, young man, and how are you? 1 said 
 Betsy Harper. "When I was engaged to be 
 married and came back from tour, Peggy's pa 
 used to turn up at the station and pay my cab 1" 
 There was a touch of acrimony in the banter. 
 
220 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Now then, mother!" 
 
 "Perhaps you wrote him what train you were 
 coming by?" said Tatham drily. "All I heard 
 was, 'Home on Sunday.' ' 
 
 "Chris is all right," put in the girl. "How 
 goes it, Chris? No news, I suppose?" 
 
 "Nothing good," he acknowledged. "You're 
 looking very fit." 
 
 "Oh, I'm going strong," she announced, tak- 
 ing off her hat. "I've had an offer !" 
 
 "Yes, I don't think 1" remarked Mrs. Harper. 
 
 "Straight 1" 
 
 "Well, but you don't need any other engage- 
 ment," he said ; "this tour doesn't finish for three 
 weeks, does it?" 
 
 "Fortnight Deptford and Hammersmith." 
 
 "What do you mean, she 'doesn't need any 
 other engagement,' if she isn't going to get mar- 
 ried before August? What's she to live on, do 
 you think? Things aren't so gay with me, I can 
 teUyou! Offer for what?" 
 
 "The Piccadilly, if you please! How's that?" 
 She turned from the mirror to enjoy the effect. 
 "A part at the Piccadilly! That'll do to fill in 
 the time, won't it?" 
 
 "Go on! you don't so much as know what 
 they're doing at the Piccadilly, you silly kid!" 
 
 "I know what the next production's to be a 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 new comedy of Forsyth J s. Give me a cig, Chris, 
 I'm dying for a smoke." Her nod was emphatic. 
 "I'm not rotting it's right enough. He came in 
 to see the show the other night at Brighton; he 
 wrote asking me to go and see him at the Old 
 Ship ; he was as sweet as sweet when I went." 
 
 "Forsyth?" 
 
 "Talked to me as if he'd been my father!" 
 
 Betsy Harper was agape. "Oh, well, I don't 
 know anything about the business, that's all," 
 she said ; "I don't know talent when I see it ! All 
 right, one lives and learns." She stared at the 
 girl round-eyed. "It's the funniest bit Z ever 
 heard in my life I" 
 
 Tatham noted that the maternal disparage- 
 ment found Peggy less meek than usual on the 
 subject of her abilities. He said quickly: 
 
 "Well, she's been paid a pretty substantial 
 compliment. Forsyth is supposed to know as 
 much about the stage as any man alive, isn't he? 
 ^What sort of part is it, Peggy?" 
 
 "Very good," drawled the girl; and having 
 [waited till this intelligence had sunk, she added 
 with a self-conscious smile, "Lead! ... If you 
 want to know" she was addressing her speech- 
 less mother "he told me there wasn't a woman 
 in London that could touch it he said the stars 
 were all a precious sight too old. He told me 
 
222 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 I had exactly the right appearance, that I was 
 just the girl he'd been looking for. . . . I'm to 
 go to his house to-morrow, and he's going to read 
 the part to me. The heroine's not supposed to 
 be more than seventeen she's at school in the 
 first act ; he's going to show me just how he wants 
 it played. He's shown me a bit already. He 
 says if I put myself in his hands, he 'guarantees' 
 I can do it and 'make a hit'! There's nothing 
 the matter with Forsyth! you should hear him 
 speak some of his lines he might have been an 
 actor." 
 
 "He was an actor," faltered Betsy Harper; 
 "didn't you know that?" The situation was 
 mystifying her less. "Well, it's a bit of luck and 
 no mistake ! My word, if it had only come along 
 a bit sooner!" There was umbrage in the look 
 she bent on Tatham. "What do you think of 
 your girl now?" she demanded. "You aren't 
 throwing yourself away, my King Cophetua!" 
 
 "I never was, Mrs. Harper," he said. 
 
 "Ah ! some people didn't think so." 
 
 "But, so far as I'm concerned, she can refuse 
 the engagement. She won't go on playing the 
 part after we marry, anyhow." 
 
 "Of course I shan't! Besides, the piece may 
 be off before then." 
 
 "I make you a wager you change your mind, 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 Mister Christopher. Now then, like a bet on it? 
 'Won't go on playing it after you marry' ? Yes, 
 I see you advising her to give it up if she's get- 
 ting big money! You mil be so flush that your 
 wife's salary won't matter to you, won't you? 
 I heard something about you the other day." 
 
 "Oh, something nice?" he murmured. 
 
 "No, it wasn't. Something about your plays !" 
 She turned eagerly to her daughter. "You don't 
 know what terms he's got in his head, Peggy?" 
 
 "Well, 'tisn't likely; terms haven't been men- 
 tioned yet. They'll be good enough, whatever 
 they are pay our exes in these digs while I'm 
 here." 
 
 "You leave the contract to me" said Mrs. 
 Harper; "I'm the person to look after that till 
 you're a married woman. Don't you sign any- 
 thing; I'll 'talk terms' for you, d'ye hear?" 
 
 "Thanks, I can do all that's wanted," said 
 Peggy sharply. "I know; you'd go asking too 
 much and queering the job for me." 
 
 "What do you say, miss?" 
 
 "I know! 'Tisn't to be expected they'll give 
 me a big chance, and star terms besides. Stands 
 to sense they won't. I don't want it lost by any- 
 body opening her mouth too wide. Now, it's no 
 good, mother!" she exclaimed; and Tatham, who 
 had been apprehensive of an outburst from Mrs. 
 
224 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 Harper, was relieved to see her subside. "I 
 found this shop for myself, and if I've got to go 
 on working till August, I mean to work where it 
 suits me. I'm not going on tour again I'm sick 
 of it ! I'm going to the Piccadilly." 
 
 " 'Found it for herself!" muttered Mrs. Har- 
 per. "Dropped out of the skies into her lap I" 
 
 "Very well, then, leave it where it dropped ? 
 don't go muffing it." She glanced towards Tat- 
 ham for approval. "What time's tea supposed 
 to come on here? Chris, you may give me an- 
 other cig, under the circs." 
 
 But the matter was hy no means disposed of. 
 The old actress was fully awake now to the fact 
 that a dramatist of importance would find her 
 daughter's childish air a valuable asset for his 
 next play, and the fear that the chance was not 
 to be turned to the best advantage obsessed her. 
 Her emotion was no longer incredulity, nor 
 amazement, nor gratitude it was greed unadul- 
 terated. Thrice she returned, by circuitous 
 routes, to the question of the salary, and Tatham 
 sat nervous of high words occurring after all. 
 
 At last, seizing the opportunity afforded by 
 a pause, he put in : 
 
 "By the way, who was it who was talking to 
 you about me the other day what was it he 
 said?" 
 
,THE POSITION OF PEGGY HAKPER 
 
 It served. She regarded him sombrely. 
 
 "It was Beaver if you know who he is." 
 
 "The business manager at the Diadem?" 
 
 "Oh, you have heard as much as that! Yes, 
 I was having a chat with him about you." 
 
 "I suppose he said my comedy wasn't any 
 good?" 
 
 "Beaver don't read the pieces he won't look 
 at your comedy, my lord. And no more will 
 anybody else, by all accounts 1 If you want to 
 know, he told me you were wasting your time 
 sending your manuscripts about the West End 
 he said he didn't know what you could be think- 
 ing of. 'Good gracious 1' he said, 'the man must 
 be crazy. You don't suppose a high-class man- 
 agement is going to consider anything by the 
 author of London Inside Out?' . . . Even if 
 you took another name even supposing you did 
 get a play done he said you'd never get a suc- 
 cess. The critics 'd be sure to hear who you were, 
 and they'd be prejudiced against your work be- 
 fore they went. . , * So that's how much chance 
 you've got !" 
 
 He neither spoke nor flinched, but his face was 
 colourless. The career of a melodrama which 
 was in the course of time to earn upwards of 
 thirty thousand pounds for its owner, though it 
 had left its author on an office stool, was now 
 
226 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 notorious in the theatrical world, but this was the 
 first plain intimation he had had that its notoriety 
 was fatal to him. Often as he had questioned 
 and trembled, it seemed to him, in the sick in- 
 stant, that the blow took him unawares. "Wast- 
 ing his time"! Whatever its qualities, anything 
 he might write was damned in advance. Nothing 
 to hope for his work wasn't to be read. The 
 clerkship for life ! . . He went home from the 
 clerkship twenty years hence, and "home" meant 
 the bitterness of failure, and loneliness, and the 
 remembrance of the right woman. . . . 
 
 The shrillness of Peggy's voice jerked him 
 back the girl was protesting, offering encour- 
 agement. The sense of what she was saying 
 began to reach his mind. 
 
 "I don't see," cried Peggy, "that it matters 
 what you write, if it pays. Let the West End 
 slide, then! Go on writing plays like London 
 Inside Out, Chris that's the best way. If you 
 ask me. Beaver's given us a jolly good tipl" 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HE had not known he was going there; his 
 only definite aim, when he got up, was to be alone 
 with his thoughts. As he drew a deep breath 
 outside the house, he was intensely thankful that 
 he had devised an adequate excuse for escaping 
 early. So far from having intended to go to her, 
 he had traversed the dreariness of Pentonville 
 Road afoot, instead of whisking westward by 
 train. It was when he reached King's Cross that 
 desolation clamoured for her. It would not mat- 
 ter what she said; he was not even certain that 
 he wished to speak of what he had heard. As yet 
 he was acutely conscious of nothing but the need 
 of seeing her he sought only the alleviation of 
 her presence. 
 
 She was living in Heathcote Street now. 
 When a tentative appointment on The Aspect 
 had begun to acquire the promise of permanency, 
 she had installed herself in furnished apartments. 
 He found her in the tiny parlour with her hat 
 on. 
 
 1227 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "I'm a nuisance?" he asked. "You were going 
 out." 
 
 "With nowhere to go!" she said, pulling out 
 the hat-pins promptly. "The room was getting 
 on my nerves a little, that's all, or perhaps it was 
 the twilight we'll have the gas; have you a 
 match in your pocket?" 
 
 He lit the gas, and she saw and said that he 
 was looking tired. 
 
 "Am I?" The mantelshelf was fragrant and 
 vivid with masses of lilac and carnations. There 
 was a bowl of them on the table too. "You've 
 been very reckless !" 
 
 "They came from our garden at home; it's my 
 birthday." 
 
 He wished her "Many happier returns." 
 
 "It hasn't been festive. I had no idea I 
 should feel so sentimental about it, but I wish it 
 hadn't fallen on Sunday that made it lonelier. 
 . . . You see, you aren't a nuisance, you're quite 
 a tolerable event." 
 
 She didn't ask him why he had stayed away so 
 long, because she knew. 
 
 "It must be a jolly garden," said the man, pic- 
 turing her in a garden. 
 
 "It isn't very well kept; there are only the girls 
 to look after it, and we leave the daisies on the 
 lawn, but I think it's rather nice. We've a foun- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 229 
 
 tain, of sorts; we're very vain of our shabby 
 fountain. It plays the Prince of Wales's feath- 
 ers when the water-rate terror hasn't just been; 
 after we've paid a water rate, we only let it 
 trickle, for a week or two. . . . Oh I" She took 
 up a little stack of typewriting. "I've read 
 Sliams. I ought to have sent it back to you. I 
 want to keep it a little longer, though, if I may? 
 I think it's the biggest thing you've done." 
 
 "I'm glad you like it. No, I'm in no hurry to 
 have it back; you can keep it for ever, if you like; 
 you're the only person who'll ever have a good 
 word to say for it!'* 
 
 The question in her eyes was insistent. He 
 looked away, opened one of the acts and ruffled 
 the leaves, and tossed it back on to the table. 
 "I've got the blues !" he burst out. 
 
 "They're obvious. . . . Bluer than normal, 
 aren't they?" she asked, smiling crookedly. 
 
 "I've made a reputation! They say I must 
 be crazy to go on sending my stuff, that nothing 
 with my name on it will ever be looked at in a 
 London theatre from now to the Day of Judg- 
 ment. I'm labelled a 'hack/ so nothing I do can 
 ever be worth the paper it's written on and 
 that's the cheapest sold; nobody's going to turn 
 a page to see what it's like!" 
 
280 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 Challenge was in the girl's voice. "Who's 
 'they'?" 
 
 "Oh, a man who ought to know; somebody 
 'inside'; he had no reason to lie about it. He 
 may be wrong, of course, but that's his candid 
 opinion. He told Mrs. Harper who amiably 
 told me. Oh, I don't blame her for telling me, 
 she was quite right to let me know, but I've had 
 a rollicking afternoon." He tried to laugh. 
 "So I've dropped in to cheer you up on your 
 birthday not having been near you for six 
 weeks, while there was nothing worse than usual 
 the matter with me!" 
 
 He, too, had kept count of the weeks! Her 
 heart missed a beat. 
 
 "Even if he's right " she began, and per- 
 ceived that he knew what she was going to say. 
 "Another name wouldn't help?" she queried. 
 
 "So I'm told. He said that, even if I did 
 get something done, the Press wouldn't take it 
 seriously. He said the critics would know whom 
 it was by." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "I don't know. He said it would be bound 
 to leak out. It isn't as if I were just a rotter 
 who'd written failures, you see I've the dis- 
 tinction of being a rotter who's written muck 
 that everybody has heard of. The idea seems to 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 231 
 
 be that there are crimes so bad that nothing can 
 conceal them 'nor earth, nor sea, though they 
 should be ten thousand fathoms deep' I I don't 
 think the gentleman suggests the critics would 
 have any animus against me, why should they? 
 He means they'd go persuaded that the cloven 
 foot was going to show and that they'd find what 
 they were jolly well looking for. *The dialogue 
 is passable, but the melodramatic nature of the' 
 
 theme or 'The theme is pleasant, but 
 
 the author's experience of provincial melo- 
 drama ' To " He choked. "I wish the 
 
 damned thing were I beg your pardon!" 
 
 The hands in her lap rose and fell with a little 
 futile gesture. It was the first time that she 
 had seen him despair, and not because she loved 
 him, love may be inept because she was an art- 
 ist she understood. Her gaze turned to the 
 thing of brains and typewriting on a garish table- 
 cover, and for comfort she tapped it. 
 
 "Some day!" she prophesied. "You'll seel 
 The name you're afraid of is going to 'mean 
 things' some day. I don't say it because we're 
 friends I've told you I didn't like some of your 
 things. But some day, in places like this, no- 
 bodies like us will be wishing they were Chris- 
 topher Tatham, and yearning as you yearn now." 
 
 He walked up and down the room, the room 
 
S38 CTHE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 that was so limited that five short steps took him 
 from the window to the shiny chiffonier. 
 
 "Everything's a fraud!" he exclaimed. 
 " * Yearn'? It's a big word for a trumpery am- 
 bition. Yes, of course, I want to get on. I 
 want to make my way, it's a man's duty, but rec- 
 ognition isn't everything. It wouldn't mean 
 happiness. It sounds like sour grapes. But one 
 changes. It's extraordinary how one changes! 
 I wanted to be an actor once it wouldn't give 
 me any pleasure now. It isn't the footlights that 
 dazzle me to-day. If I could succeed in any 
 capacity at all! I write because it's the only 
 thing I can do; I'm not satisfied to jog along as 
 a clerk all my life, that's what it amounts to. I 
 want a career. I want a career because I've 
 nothing else to look forward to. ... You 
 know! 3 ' He flung round at her as if she had pro- 
 tested. "You know I've made a mess of it! I 
 wasn't in love with her the night I proposed ; I 
 didn't mean to propose. It happened. Well, 
 I've stuck it honour or cowardice, I don't know 
 I've stuck it, and I suppose I've got to go 
 through with it, she's waited for me so many 
 years; but if I'm to fail in love, and everything 
 
 else as well Do you think it's too late? 
 
 Look here, we're pals, aren't we? I want a pal's 
 advice. I'm fond of somebody else. I don't 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 know whether she cares for me. I mustn't ask 
 her yet; she wouldn't tell me if I did ask her; 
 but I could be happy, even as a clerk, as long as 
 1 lived, if I could go home in the evening to the 
 other woman. . . . That's the situation; that's 
 how I feel 1 What's the straight thing for me to 
 do?" 
 
 'He didn't say, "I love you," she didn't say, 
 "I understand." When she trusted her voice 
 and found that it broke, she whispered: 
 
 "It is too late." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Five years six years, what is it? She must 
 care for you a good deal to have waited so long 
 as that. . . . And don't forget that the other 
 woman mayn't care in the same way." 
 
 "If she did ?" he urged, drawing closer to 
 
 her. 
 
 "It would make no difference in my opin- 
 
 ion." 
 
 "Not if I were free if I could go to her hon- 
 estly to-morrow and tell her I was free?" 
 
 "If she'd any self-respect, she'd be ashamed of 
 herself; she'd think of the girl that she had made 
 miserable ; she'd think of the girl almost as much 
 as she thought of you. If she's if she's worth 
 wanting, she wouldn't find the position good 
 enough 1" 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "That's how it seems to you?" he said. 
 
 She nodded. "That's how it seems to me. I 
 can't answer for you; you're a man, you might 
 break it off and feel no regret I can't say. I 
 don't know Miss Harper, and I can't pretend to 
 shape your future, but I can put myself in the 
 place of the other woman it wouldn't take you 
 any nearer to Tier" 
 
 After a long silence, he said harshly: 
 
 "I suppose I may as well stick it altogether, 
 then. It's hardly worth while to behave like a 
 cad for nothing. . . . I've been a cheerful vis- 
 itor! Do you know, I think I'll say 'good- 
 night.' " 
 
 Both knew that it meant "good-bye." 
 
 "Good-night," she said, white-faced and smil^ 
 ing. 
 
 The few seconds seemed insuff erably long be- 
 fore the slam of the street door and the sound of 
 retreating footsteps made it safe for her to give 
 way. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE precise number of more talented and am- 
 bitious young women who would have welcomed 
 ecstatically the chance that had befallen a young 
 woman possessing only mediocre ability, and no 
 ambition at all, cannot be stated. But some 
 scores of them were, at the time, seeking the 
 humblest of engagements vainly. And when it 
 is said that W. B. Forsyth had gone to Brighton 
 expressly to see Peggy Harper, and rejoiced in 
 his fauteuil, the situation may appear more 
 anomalous still. 
 
 Forsyth's thanksgiving, however, was not in- 
 spired by admiration of Miss Harper's histrionic 
 capabilities. He was under no impression that 
 he had discovered a genius, nor, as a dramatist of 
 experience and reputation, was he in the habit of 
 exploring for geniuses he found it a far more 
 profitable policy to cast established favourites in 
 his plays. He had gone to Brighton because he 
 had been suffering, for the past three months, 
 from a sensation not widely removed from panic, 
 a liability to wake in the night and ask himself, 
 
 235 
 
236 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 with an all-gone feeling in the stomach, why h0 
 had been so rash as to devote a year to the writing 
 of a piece which demanded for its adequate in- 
 terpretation a personality possessed by no actress 
 that he could call to mind. In fine, for the first; 
 time since he had attained a position, Forsyth 
 had done an unpractical thing; his theme most 
 promising in the scenario had lured him to in- 
 discretion. The chief, the big part was, of 
 course, a man's, since the play had been designed 
 for the Piccadilly Theatre, and Onslow, the ac- 
 tor-manager, was to be the hero; but the hero 
 had a daughter, * 'Daphne," and, as the work de- 
 veloped, "Daphne" had taken unto herself an 
 importance for which her progenitor had been 
 unprepared at the outset. To reduce the daugh- 
 ter would be to detract from the father to de- 
 tract from the father would be to spoil the play. 
 Forsyth, the eminent, had appealed to a 
 dramatic agent with an anxiety as keen as the 
 agent's poorest client. The harassed play- 
 wright had viewed photographs by the dozen, 
 and made fatiguing journeys to view some of 
 the originals. He had been to Kingston-on- 
 Thames to see a girl who was actually as young 
 as "Daphne" was supposed to be, but she had 
 comported herself with all the stiff timidity of 
 the stage novice, and he had realised, even while 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 237, 
 
 he deplored, that she wasn't to be trained in the 
 few weeks at his disposal. "You'll never find 
 every quality you want!" Mrs. Forsyth had re- 
 minded him, when he returned despondent to an- 
 nounce that the journey had been waste of time; 
 and he had answered, "I don't suppose I shall, 
 my dear, but I can't have an ungainly Daphne; 
 I'd rather have any defect than ungainliness I" 
 He had travelled to Cheltenham to see another 
 girl, who would have recommended herself to 
 him but for the fact that she weighed too much; 
 and again his wife had mentioned the unlikeli- 
 hood of his securing the ideal exponent of the 
 part. "I can't have an adipose Daphne," he 
 had said; "I'm willing to put up with anything 
 but adiposity!" Miss Harper was not too 
 stout, nor too tall, nor too short; her voice had 
 some pleasant notes in it, and w r ould be very 
 agreeable when he had taught her how to use it; 
 and, during the interview at the hotel, she had 
 impressed him as being plastic material. He 
 wr.s infinitely relieved; and so was Mrs. For- 
 syth, who had found him latterly "gey ill to live 
 with." 
 
 When Peggy made her toilette on the after- 
 noon after her return to town, her mother wan- 
 dered about the room querulously. 
 
 "You'll be sorry when it's no good if you don't 
 
238 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 leave it to me," she said; "you'll go too cheap, 
 mark my words ! You've no idea what you ought 
 to get how should you have? you've never seen 
 a salary worth talking about. I suppose if they 
 offered you five pounds a week you'd take it?" 
 
 "You bet I should!" said the girl, 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "I'd a jolly sight rather have five pounds a 
 week in London than thirty bob on tour I What 
 do you think?" 
 
 She continued to array herself complacently. 
 All her belongings were not unpacked yet, and 
 alternately she searched for trifles in the chest of 
 drawers, and dived for finery in the hamper. 
 
 "Some people don't deserve to have any luck 
 some people don't know luck when they see 
 it! My word, you with a mother that knows the 
 ropes, talking about five pounds a week! You 
 little fool, you!" 
 
 "Mind, please, mother, you're getting in the 
 way!" 
 
 "Oh, I'll mind mind my own business, too! 
 What does it matter to me if you throw your 
 chance away?" Her arms were dramatic. 
 "What does it matter to me, now you're going 
 to get married? That's it, that's the way- 
 pinch and strain for your girl all your life, and 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 289 
 
 then as soon as a bit of luck comes to her, off she 
 goes to a fellow 1" 
 
 Peggy contemplated two pairs of soiled kid 
 gloves. "I don't know whether to put on the 
 white or the fawn," she said. " Which do you 
 think would go best? Chris says white gloves 
 are 'noisy.' ' 
 
 "Chris be bothered," snapped Mrs. Harper. 
 "Put on the white! What does Chris know? 
 I'm fed up with your Chris. A nice soft thing 
 for him, won't it be, to have a wife to keep him?" 
 
 "He won't have a wife to keep him, because 
 he wants me to leave the profession, and you 
 know it very well so don't talk rot, mother! I 
 don't know why you've got your knife into him 
 all of a sudden," she went on sharply. "You 
 liked him very much once ; he hasn't changed, so 
 far as I can see !" 
 
 "No, and never will he's a sticker, that's what 
 he is. Never do any good as long as he lives." 
 
 "That's as may be," said the girl defiantly. 
 "Look here, stop it! I don't want a row, I've 
 got something else to think about to-day. Stop 
 it," she repeated, with a catch in her voice, "com- 
 ing and nagging me just when I want to go out 
 looking my best!" 
 
 She surveyed herself in the mirror again, and 
 slipped some more shilling bangles on her wrists. 
 
240 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 !A. vulgar hat aggravated a vivid blouse, made at 
 home and made badly. Her reflection encour- 
 aged her, and the occasion was sufficiently excit- 
 ing for her to recover her spirits almost as soon 
 as she was in the street. By the light of an of- 
 fer for a fashionable theatre, the detested pro- 
 fession looked already less odious to her, and she 
 was at one with her mother in deeming it a thou- 
 sand pities that such advancement had not oc- 
 curred to her a long time ago. The tears and 
 troubles that she would have been spared! Why 
 couldn't somebody have seen a few years earlier 
 how clever she was? . . . 
 
 Wouldn't Naomi Knight, and Nelson, and 
 everybody else that she had ever met be aston- 
 ished when they saw the news in The Stage! She 
 smiled broadly on the pavements of Liverpool 
 Road in imagining their ejaculations. "Lor, 
 look at this, Peggy Harper goes to the Picca- 
 dilly I'* In the bus another girl, obviously an 
 actress, sat, adorned with cheap finery and jin- 
 gling with bangles; it was exhilarating to sur- 
 mise that she was going up West to try to find 
 an engagement in a No. 2 company. "She 
 wouldn't half like to have an appointment with 
 Forsyth, would she?" mused Peggy. "What 
 ho!" 
 
 But a tessellated entrance and the splendour 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 of the hall-porter were a shade intimidating. 
 Though she had visited many a person whose 
 abode was called a "flat," Forsyth's was the first 
 flat that she had seen. 
 
 Her embarrassment was dispelled by the great 
 man's greeting; his pleasure was evident as he 
 welcomed her. No repugnant detail of her cos- 
 tume escaped his notice, but her taste in dress 
 mattered nothing to him, for "Daphne's" frocks 
 would come from Bond Street, and Mrs. For- 
 syth would take "Daphne" to order them; he 
 again appraised the eyes, the smile, and the alert 
 little form. If only the imitative faculty lay 
 behind that pretty brow she would serve his pur- 
 pose well! 
 
 At his request she laid the hat aside. He put 
 a typewritten part in her hands, and lolled on a 
 couch, with an act of the comedy on his knees. 
 
 "Now we'll take the first scene between 
 Daphne and her father," he said. "I told you 
 in Brighton, didn't I, how she feels towards her 
 father? The child's tremendously fond of him, 
 and there's a touch of the protective instinct in 
 her love. You know that inborn maternal in- 
 stinct that little girls have for their dolls ! Well, 
 Daphne is to show a touch of the maternal when 
 phe first suspects that her father is in trouble." 
 
 Peggy nodded, not feeling at all sure, how- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 ever, what little girls and their dolls had to do 
 with it. 
 
 She and Forsyth read the scene aloud, and the 
 dramatist did not once interrupt her. This 
 seemed flattering, and at the end she looked 
 round for a compliment. His face was placid, 
 but she could discern no approval in it. Her 
 heart sank, and as a matter of fact she had read 
 the part much less intelligently than he had ex- 
 pected. He was telling himself that he had 
 hoped for too much at the first attempt, though 
 actually he had hoped for very little. Well, 
 never mind! he was going to mould her into the 
 character, train her in every inflexion, every 
 movement, every flash of facial play. Being 
 tactful and understanding human nature, espe- 
 cially human nature as it was to be found in the 
 wings, he did not at this point say anything to 
 detract from the girl's self-esteem; he allowed 
 the events of the afternoon to do it by degrees. 
 
 For three hours he laboured with Peggy, la- 
 boured incessantly, disguising the obstinacy of a 
 man who knows what he wants, and means to 
 have it, under a demeanour of unruffled patience. 
 
 But the interruptions were countless now, and 
 she was inclined to resent them. 
 
 "You promised to put yourself in my hands," 
 he reminded her once gently. 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 243 
 
 "Yes I know, I am!" she declared, redden- 
 ing. "But but aren't I to show any individ- 
 uality, then?" 
 
 For an instant the professional jargon of the 
 pupil tempted the master to an ironic reply. But 
 he only said, "Well! perhaps my own idea might 
 be bettered show me what you want to do there, 
 speak the lines your own way!" 
 
 Peggy hadn't a notion of what she wanted to 
 do ; she only knew that she was finding this little 
 man with a big head very exacting and weari- 
 some. So she re-read the lines and emphasised 
 words at random, and introduced a laugh, which 
 was musical, but preposterous in a pathetic pas- 
 sage. 
 
 "You laugh very prettily," said Forsyth; 
 "but, you know, you're supposed to be on the 
 verge of tears there. And I don't care for your 
 emphasis, 'I wonder if he sees how unhappy I 
 am sometimes/ You've already said you're un- 
 happy. It should be 'I wonder if he sees how 
 unhappy I am sometimes.' ' 
 
 Peggy spoke the words again, but missed the 
 note of pathos. 
 
 "Too cheerful," said Forsyth. "Remember 
 
 what she's thinking about. And Well, 
 
 never mind that now!" His brain buzzed. 
 
 Peggy sighed and persevered. 
 
B44 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 *'Nbt quite," he murmured, and delivered the 
 lines several times, very slowly, for her bene- 
 fit. . . . "Not quite," he said again and again; 
 "now once more! Listen to me and say it just 
 as I do. ... No, that's a little too whiny! . . . 
 No, now we're getting a little too coy ! . . . Oh, 
 we shall manage it, don't be afraid! Take your 
 time, there's nothing to be discouraged about, 
 'I wonder if he sees how unhappy I am some- 
 times/ " 
 
 She echoed him at last; but later, when they 
 returned to the page, the inflexion had been lost, 
 and the lesson had to be given to her again. 
 
 And then she kept saying "interes/ing." 
 
 There were many such stumbling-blocks; so 
 many that if any layman had been present he 
 would have marvelled that the playwright could 
 retain confidence in his choice. And more than 
 once Forsyth did waver. He wavered, but he 
 increased his efforts as he questioned forlornly 
 where a likelier "Daphne" was to be found. And, 
 after all, the girl had grit! When she had re- 
 covered from the first shock of disillusion, he 
 could see that she was plucky. While he feigned 
 to be unaware that she was feeling humiliated, he 
 was conscious that a smarting vanity made her 
 task more difficult. 
 
 They read no further than the first scene, but 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 they read it so often that at last she knew some 
 of the lines by heart. This led him to play the 
 scene with her, and now, more than ever, she 
 appreciated the qualities of her coach. Not only 
 could he show her how lines should be uttered, 
 he could show her what to do while she said them 
 and how to convey a tense moment without 
 saying anything at all. He could do more than 
 explain, he could demonstrate. 
 
 "No, not like that," he would say; "like this!" 
 A. little man with a big head simulating a young 
 girl and simulating so cleverly that he was il- 
 lustrative and not ridiculous ! She was being in- 
 structed by a dramatist who, as he w T rote, heard 
 every tone and saw every gesture of his charac- 
 ters; she was being drilled in her calling by a 
 dramatist who had been an actor and could in- 
 dicate in action what he meant. He made no 
 more appeals to intelligence, he talked no longer 
 of the instinct of the girl-child for the doll; he 
 recognised that she was the doll, and that it was 
 his business to make her dance. Every finger 
 that she was to lift he showed her ; every step that 
 she was to stir. Sometimes he would cry to her 
 not to stir at all. "It isn't wanted," he would 
 say, the big head to one side like a photogra- 
 pher's; or, "No, no, your face can do all that's 
 necessary there. Like this! . . . My face isn't 
 
pretty, but I want yours to do that." And pres- 
 ently it would be, "Now smile, with your hands 
 behind you tip your chin a little bit. There 
 you are ! No ; I want the smile more arch. . . . 
 The chin a leetle more up. . . . That's it. Now, 
 do that again, while you're speaking the line. . . . 
 Capital! very fetching and natural." The third 
 time that he pulled the wires she began to think 
 complacently that it was natural to her. 
 
 The sunshine had faded while they worked. 
 
 "We've done enough for to-day." He 
 pushed her gently into a capacious chair. "You've 
 been a very good girl." Her type was familiar 
 to him, and he gave her the sugar that she craved. 
 "A very clever girl! Now lean back and curl 
 up. Don't think any more ; we're going to have 
 tea." 
 
 The quietest servant that she had ever seen 
 appeared w r ith tea, and tea was served as smartly 
 as if the study had been a "set" at a West End 
 theatre. 
 
 "Cream?" asked the eminent host; and she 
 nearly said, "Rather!" 
 
 She began to examine things, things that she 
 had been too nervous, or too busy, to examine 
 before. Forsyth did himself well, she reflected. 
 What a lovely chair! And that what-was-its- 
 name? all over mother-of-pearl and gimcracks! 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 247 
 
 Funny not to have a looking-glass on the mantel- 
 piece, though. Rather dull, the room, but good ; 
 oh yes, everything in it was decidedly good. Ex- 
 cept, perhaps, the pictures: the pictures didn't 
 seem to have been finished. Her gaze reverted 
 to the celebrity. His attention was concen- 
 trated upon a basket of petits-fours, and petu- 
 lantly he exclaimed, "Whenever we have these 
 little ding-dongs for tea, there's every sort but 
 the one I like I" Just as Chris might have grum- 
 bled, she thought. It thrilled her with a sense 
 of importance to realise that she had heard W. B 
 Forsyth grumble about his cakes. 
 
 He arranged with her that she should come 
 again on the morrow, and every day, and he sent 
 her back to Islington in a taxi-cab, saying that 
 she looked tired. She looked, in truth, a great 
 deal less tired than he and with reason. 
 
 "Well" Betsy Harper had grown more 
 genial "how did the reading go? Was he sat- 
 isfied with you?" 
 
 "Sent me home in a taxi I" boasted Peggy, sup- 
 pressing much that was unessential to the narra- 
 tive. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 DURING the weeks that lay between his pre- 
 liminary lesson to her and the date on which the 
 general rehearsals of the piece began, she had 
 been taught more of the technique of her calling 
 than she had acquired unaided in ten preceding 
 years. She had not been metamorphosed into a 
 clever actress it was as far beyond his power to 
 instil a gift for histrionics as to communicate a 
 talent for dramatic authorship but what he had 
 done, with experience and fortitude and the 
 sweat of his brow, was to compel her to mimic him 
 as "Daphne" with sufficient fidelity for him to 
 foresee her giving a pleasing performance by the 
 time the general rehearsals finished. 
 
 It had been a lofty moment when she tripped 
 past the doorkeeper of a West End theatre with 
 a part in her hand for the first time ; but, on the 
 whole, the rehearsals at the Piccadilly proved 
 much less gratifying than she had expected. 
 During a quarter of an hour of friendless wait- 
 ing, while she recognised the popular Miss 
 Marshall, and saw her greet Carrie Warne, and 
 
 248 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 24-9 
 
 watched Miss Warne chatting intimately with 
 Miss Eley Sashbourne while she stood envying 
 their clothes, and their air of being at ease here 
 she had assumed that she would be admitted to 
 the distinguished groups as soon as the promi- 
 nence of the part that she was to play had been 
 revealed to them. But she was not admitted and 
 made to feel at home. The flash of pride at 
 finding herself on a stage with women who bore 
 names that had been familiar to her all her life, 
 names that were of immense importance to her 
 mind, had expired when she realised that the 
 prominence of her part was resented. Miss 
 Marshall and Miss Warne, who had grown mid- 
 dle-aged without attaining to "leading business" 
 in London, owed their hard-won reputations to 
 their abilities; and even Miss Eley Sashbourne, 
 who had had rich parents to entertain useful peo- 
 ple and buy a position for her, had been satisfied 
 to make her West End debut in a part compara- 
 tively small. No cordial welcome was extended 
 to an unknown girl thrust into the position of 
 leading lady. Some of the men offered cheery 
 comments from time to time, but the women re- 
 mained formal. When she blundered in a scene, 
 the cold condescension of the "Pardon me, I think 
 you should be on my left, my dear!" intimated 
 unmistakably that she should be in the prov- 
 
250 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 inces; and when it happened that Forsyth or 
 Onslow corrected her with a touch of temper, 
 she knew that her discomfiture was heing re- 
 garded in the wings with satirical smiles. 
 
 And as the date fixed for the production drew 
 near, both the author and the actor-manager's 
 severity increased. So far from being uplifted 
 now, she thought with tender regret of the happy- 
 go-lucky companies that she had left. Never 
 had she imagined that so much fuss could be 
 made about trifles ; and if it had not been too late 
 she would have refused to fulfil the engagement 
 and hidden herself from her mother's wrath. She 
 hated everybody hated the women for holding 
 aloof from her, hated Forsyth for burdening her 
 with the responsibility, hated Onslow for "get- 
 ting her so cheap" ! She entered the theatre pale 
 with apprehension ; and since no maternal sympa- 
 thy was to be looked for, she made a confidant 
 of Tatham, and found him, at this period, newly 
 and strangely companionable. 
 
 There was one occasion on which she broke 
 down. The rehearsal had been called for eight 
 o'clock in the evening, and all had gone smoothly 
 until she spoke a line which, by reason of the daily 
 reproofs that it entailed, had become a haunting 
 terror to her. It occurred in a scene with On- 
 slow in the fourth act, and her heart thumped as 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 251 
 
 she approached it. She had repeated it to her- 
 self fifty times during the afternoon and felt con- 
 fident that at last the desired inflexions had been 
 mastered ; but now misgivings made her feel sick 
 again. 
 
 Onslow, wearing an expression of fatherly 
 solicitude, sat by a table, his forehead resting on 
 a forefinger. She took the three timid steps be- 
 hind him that she had been drilled to take, and 
 as her voice smote the silence, it seemed to her 
 inxiety that the theatre held its breath to listen. 
 She said: 
 
 ' 'I don't know how to tell you what I want to 
 say I never thought that I should want to say 
 it.' " 
 
 Onslow's back was declamatory she knew 
 that she had failed again before he raised a de- 
 spairing arm towards the roof. The gesture re- 
 lieved him, his verbal remonstrance was not vio- 
 lent. He inquired with depth of feeling, and of 
 nobody in particular, "Isn't it marvellous?" 
 
 Of her he inquired, "Are we never going to 
 have it right?" 
 
 He rose, and dominated the stage she had no 
 longer a "father," she had only an actor-manager 
 struggling to control his fury. 
 
 "Will you speak it like this, Miss Harper, 
 please? 'I don't know how to tell you.' ' 
 
858 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 ' 'I don't know how to tell you/ " she said, 
 swallowing convulsively. 
 
 "No!" His chest heaved under the restrain? 
 that he was putting upon expletives. "Not, 
 'How to tell you,' but 'How to tell you/ " 
 ' 'How to tell you/ " she quavered. 
 
 He plunged his hands in his trousers pockets 
 and took a little composing turn in front of the 
 footlights. 
 
 "Try again, my child! Now, now, now, don't 
 upset yourself; just echo me, that's all I want 
 you to do." The suavity of his "all"! "Listen I 
 'How to tell you/ " 
 
 Desperation stumbled within a semi-tone of it. 
 
 "That's better," he said encouragingly. 
 "Now take it a little further: 'I don't know hoT^ 
 to tell you what I want to say/ ' 
 
 ' 'I don't know how to tell you what I want 
 to say/ " she wailed. A tear was trickling down 
 her nose. 
 
 "It's the most extraordinary thing I ever came 
 across in my life!" gasped Onslow to Forsyth, 
 who was suffering in the stalls. "We've had 
 three weeks of it 1" And in the wings Miss Mar- 
 shall remarked under her breath to Miss Warne, 
 "If he engages girls as leading ladies simply be- 
 cause they're young 1" And, under her 
 
 breath, Miss Warne answered Miss Marshall, 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 253 
 
 "When 7 went into the profession, she'd have 
 been playing the servant !" Peggy did not dare 
 to turn her head and didn't catch their words, 
 but she could hear their whispers, and imagined 
 their eyebrows and their shoulders. With all 
 her sobbing soul she yearned to be back on tour in 
 No Child to Call Her "Mother." 
 
 It was nearly one o'clock in the morning be- 
 fore the ordeal reached its climax. 
 
 "Bring me a chair!" called Onslow, declining 
 to perceive that a chair was within arm's length 
 of him. "I'll have it spoken the way I want it, 
 if we all stop in the theatre till breakfast-time 1'* 
 Then leisurely he sat down and folded his arms; 
 and while the company stood around disconsolate 
 and thought of their cab fares to the suburbs, the 
 actor-manager continued to reiterate, " 'I don't 
 know how to tell you what I want to say I 
 never thought that I should want to say it,' " and, 
 blind with tears, Peggy continued to recite the 
 line after him, without catching the right inflex- 
 ions once. 
 
 Finally he leapt out of the chair with more 
 volatility than he had manifested since the days 
 when he played in farce. 
 
 "Eleven o'clock to-morrow!" he flung at the 
 prompter. 
 
 And, "I wish I was dead and buried!" she SUIT- 
 
254 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 died to Tatham, who was waiting outside to take 
 her home. 
 
 He was as sorry for her as if she had been his 
 child she seemed to him a little futile child, as 
 she panted and sniffed beside him on the deserted 
 pavements till a hansom crawled into view. He 
 reminded her that her misery wouldn't last that 
 even if she never spoke the line in the way desired 
 of her, the heavens wouldn't fall; he dwelt, as 
 optimistically as his thoughts permitted, on the 
 fact that "Daphne" was the last part she was to 
 play and that soon she would be his wife. She 
 came nearer to loving him than she had ever done 
 before, as he tried to console her during the long 
 drive. But her sobs persisted, and while she 
 clung to him, she repeated again and again, "I 
 wish I was dead and buried, I do! I give you 
 my word, I wish I was dead and buried I" 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ALTHOUGH Forsyth was one of the most ac- 
 complished of living dramatists, and an intellec- 
 tual man, and his play represented some years 
 of thought and twelve months of strenuous work, 
 it scored only a semi-success. The Press ob- 
 jected to it on the grounds of "false psychology," 
 and the public, who were not in the least con- 
 cerned with the truth of its psychology, objected 
 to it because they found it dull. His play fell 
 flat. But his marionette was exalted. The no- 
 tices were an ovation to "Miss Peggy Harper." 
 Her "acute sensibility and intelligence," the 
 "spontaneity of her talent," and the "brilliant 
 promise of her surprising youth" were common- 
 places in panegyrics which sparkled with such 
 phrases as "sweetly delicious with the winsome- 
 ness of English maidenhood," and a "career to 
 be conspicuous in the annals of the Stage." 
 
 "Gawd!" gasped Peggy, reading one of the 
 most laudatory of the criticisms in bed the day 
 after the piece was produced, and wondering 
 what a lot of the words meant. She could not 
 
 255 
 
256 TH]E POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 determine whether she was being extolled for her 
 "artistry" in having done something not clearly 
 expressed, or for her "artistry" in avoiding it; 
 hut no matter which way it might he, it was evi- 
 dent that she was a unique young creature, and 
 she felt breathless and a little light-headed. She 
 did not know whether she wanted to sing, or 
 dance, or cry, but she knew that she didn't want 
 her bacon, and that the world had altered. There 
 was an unfamiliar and emotional brightness in 
 the sunshine that streamed into the untidy room, 
 and never before had she seen her mother sitting 
 at the edge of the bed, beaming down at her like 
 this. She kicked her heels hysterically on the 
 mattress. 
 
 "Here, I say! run out and buy some more 
 papers, mother," she commanded. "This isn't 
 half all right, what? What price the other 
 women, now, them and their side? They must 
 be feeling a bit silly this morning, ain't they? 
 Look here two lines at the beginning I've got, 
 and . . . six, seven, eight, further down. All 
 about me! . . . And Eley Sashbourne's only got 
 two 1" She counted again, and shrieked with tri- 
 umph. "Seven words for the 'great' Marshall, 
 and they don't weigh much. . . . Now let's see 
 Warne's little bit. . . . Go on, get some more 
 papers, mother, blow the expense 1" 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 257 
 
 Tatham's message of pleasure and congratula- 
 tion delighted her; she felt very tender towards 
 him as she slipped it under the pillow. He had 
 been among the audience, in an undesirable seat, 
 and congratulated her at supper, but until he 
 opened his newspaper at breakfast he had had 
 no idea that he had witnessed a success so note- 
 worthy and brilliant. He telegraphed lengthily 
 to her on his way to the City; and being unable 
 to reach her before she left for the theatre, he 
 waited for her again at the stage-door after the 
 curtain fell. 
 
 She joined him radiant and gabbling. Both 
 had read many criticisms in the meanwhile. She 
 kept inquiring if he had seen what this, that, and 
 the other paper said of her. She had scarcely a 
 suspicion that praise in one quarter was more 
 important than in another ; she did not know the 
 names of any of the critics, and estimated the 
 value of approval by its superlatives. A daily 
 for which Pritchard wrote the first-night no- 
 tices, had contained little more about her than 
 "A very pleasing performance was given by a 
 newcomer to London, Miss Peggy Harper," and 
 fche said contemptuously that she "didn't think 
 much of that." She "didn't think much" of two 
 or three temperate opinions that would have 
 raised her to a pinnacle of rapture a day or two 
 
258 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 before. Vanity may attain no larger dimen- 
 sions in the atmosphere of the footlights than 
 elsewhere, but nowhere else does it grow so plen- 
 tifully, or so fast. The contrast between her 
 celebrity this evening for "celebrity" she al- 
 ready had and her whimpering despair a few 
 evenings ago flared to the man as they walked 
 towards a cab. 
 
 "Who'd have thought it?" he exclaimed "do 
 you remember our coming along here the other 
 night?" 
 
 He was surprised to see, by her shrug, that the 
 reminder was unwelcome. "Oh, that didn't 
 amount to much!" she said shortly. And some- 
 thing in his tone had displeased her as the glim- 
 mer of amusement in Onslow's eyes had dis- 
 pleased her when he felicitated her on her 
 "laurels"; and as an undercurrent of facetious- 
 ness in her mother's jollity had displeased her all 
 the afternoon. 
 
 On the morrow, Forsyth's "Well, my child, 
 you didn't put up with it all for nothing, eh?" 
 displeased her in the same way. She reflected 
 that it was "a funny thing," by which she meant 
 "an annoying one," that "people" seemed to give 
 her very little credit for the success that she had 
 made ; she was told how lucky she had been, and 
 how grateful she ought to be, but nobody that she 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 259 
 
 met said how clever she was! At the show, of 
 course, the women were hating her for cutting 
 them out ; and poor old Forsyth must be feeling 
 a bit jealous the critics had thought a heap 
 more of her than of himl . But even in Chris's 
 congratulations there had been something wrong, 
 something well, there had been something miss- 
 ing, a touch of the Of course one could 
 
 never say such a thing, but really and truly, a 
 touch of the respect that her triumph demanded! 
 Naturally, she didn't want him to feel small when 
 he talked to her, but it was funny that he could 
 remain so free-and-easy, all the same! . . . 
 
 It crossed her mind that perhaps he felt more 
 deference than he was disposed to let her see. 
 She reflected that he was "ever so much" older 
 than she, and a failure and look what Beaver 
 had said about his things! . . . Yes, poor old 
 Chris must be feeling a bit out of it, too. Rather 
 sickening for poor old mother, as well, come to 
 think of it ! Oh, well, she'd never let on that she 
 was aware of having walked over both their 
 heads, she wasn't that sort. She'd never swank, 
 like some people. Nobody could call it 
 "swank" the way she was behaving to Warne, 
 and Marshall, and Eley Sashbourne now that 
 they couldn't help being civil to her; getting a 
 bit of her own back, that was all! Still it was 
 
260 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HAHPEB 
 
 pretty rotten of poor old Chris and poor old 
 mother to pretend they didn't know she had risen 
 far above them; they didn't do themselves any 
 good by that ! 
 
 It was rather less than a week after her debul 
 at the Piccadilly, that when Forsyth stopped to 
 speak to her in the Haymarket she replied to 
 him in the stuffy tone of the highly consequential, 
 and took leave of him with a nod familiar and 
 abrupt. About the same time, her dresser re- 
 marked to the young woman behind the pit bar 
 that the "notices in the pipers had given Miss 
 'Arper such a swelled head that she couldn't get 
 it through her skirt.'* 
 
 She was "eighteen" still. London was in- 
 formed that she was "only eighteen" every time 
 that a photograph of her was reproduced in a pic- 
 ture journal and her photographs were nearly 
 as popular with the picture journals as if she 
 had been a musical-comedy idol. More than half 
 of the audience were drawn to the Piccadilly by 
 their curiosity to witness the performance of "the 
 winsome English maiden" whose natural talent 
 had swept her to theatrical fame direct from the 
 "class-room of a fashionable boarding-school" 
 variously stated to have been in Hanover, Paris, 
 and Eastbourne. A paragraph, under "Promi- 
 nent Persons," described Onslow's discovery of 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 261 
 
 her "As the favourite of the school finished her 
 recitation, the famous actor-manager turned to 
 his companion, saying, 'That child is destined to 
 be one of the greatest actresses of our time.' ' 
 And the Editor of Mother And Girls begged for 
 the privilege of including her views among 
 "other notable Englishwomen's" upon the Fe- 
 male Suffrage movement. Not being quite sure 
 what it was, and appreciating the value of an 
 additional advertisement, she was harassed, un- 
 til her mother came to her aid. "Miss Peggy 
 Harper, the gifted young actress at the Picca- 
 dilly Theatre," wrote : "My time is far too much 
 occupied by my work for me to trouble my head 
 about such matters." And readers could divine 
 the gifted young actress's weary smile as she 
 thought of the women whose less momentous pur- 
 suits allowed them leisure for such frivolities. 
 
 The little mummer who had once averred that 
 "acting was silly," and pronounced her profes- 
 sion "a rotten business," soon afterwards began 
 to refer to her "work" and her "art" in conver- 
 sation too. Her conversation was decorated 
 with all the phrases which had been impressive 
 to her upon the lips of others phrases by which 
 she, in her own turn, sought to be impressive at 
 home. 
 
 Invariably now she referred to Forsyth as 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "W. B.," and she spoke of several distinguished 
 persons to whom she had been presented for a 
 moment behind the scenes, or whom she had never 
 met at all, by their Christian names. To Tatham 
 the affectations that broke out over her nature 
 like a rash were occasionally so exasperating that 
 he marvelled at her mother's blandness. But 
 Betsy Harper, for so long as she could keep so- 
 ber, or became intoxicated amiably, was minded 
 to avoid dissension with a profitable daughter. 
 
 A simple incident which afforded the girl con- 
 siderable pleasure occurred on a Wednesday. 
 There being no Wednesday matinee at the Pic- 
 cadilly, she was always free on that day to at- 
 tend a matinee elsewhere, and highly agreeable 
 it was to her to saunter into the stalls when the 
 house was filled and note that there were ardent 
 playgoers present who recognised her. She un- 
 failingly turned an abstracted gaze towards the 
 pit before she sat down. One Wednesday, as 
 she and her mother entered the foyer of the 
 Sceptre, her glance alighted on young Nelson, 
 waiting among a little group of obscure profes- 
 sionals till he had an opportunity for asking at 
 the box-office if the acting manager could "oblige 
 him with a seat." The boy observed her with a 
 start, and sweeping off his hat, regarded her dif- 
 fidently. When she paused, it was plain that he 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 263 
 
 was delighted to be seen greeting the new star in 
 the foyer of a London theatre. 
 
 "Why, Miss Harper!" he exclaimed, for those 
 close at hand to hear, "how d'ye do?" 
 
 She was gratified both by his exaggerated bow 
 and his respectful "Miss Harper" it pro- 
 claimed instantly his appreciation of the fact that 
 they were now in disparate spheres. She ten- 
 dered limp finger-tips the fingers that had 
 stroked his face when he called her "Peggums." 
 
 "Ah, Nelson!" she said, with gracious languor; 
 "going in to see the show?" 
 
 "If I can get a seat," murmured young Nel- 
 son, shooting his linen, and posing with his cane. 
 "I suppose you've got yours?" 
 
 "Oh yes," she said stuffily, "I 'phoned that I'd 
 be in." She had written a request for tickets in 
 the ordinary way, and enclosed a stamped and 
 addressed envelope for the reply, but she had 
 heard Onslow say, in speaking of some other 
 performance, "I 'phoned that I'd be in," and had 
 liked the lordly sound of it. 
 
 "You're no end of a swell, eh?" He eyed her 
 admiringly. "My best congrats! I was in 
 front last week." 
 
 "Ah, it's not really very much of a part one 
 does what one can with it!" She owed this 
 flower of speech to Miss Eley Sashbourne. 
 
284 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 ff l thought it was a ripping part," said young 
 Nelson. "I saw your photo in the Sketch last 
 week a whole page to yourself, what! A jollj 
 fine photo it isl" 
 
 "It?" he said vaguely. "Which? I forget 
 . . . Sketch? I don't remember which one they 
 had. There have heen so many of me; they're 
 all over London." She simpered, with a pucker 
 on her brow. "It's getting rather dull for me 
 to look at the papers now. I can't pick one up 
 without seeing myself I'm getting so bored by 
 mel" . . . She acquired a weary, confidential 
 note, her eyebrows climbing higher still. "You 
 know, it's funny how soon one gets used to it all. 
 I mean to say, one always supposed that fame 
 must be so awfully jolly, but, 'pon my word, 
 there's nothing in it rather a nuisance in some 
 ways. Wherever I go, I'm stared at. ... 
 Nelly was saying the same thing only the other 
 night." 
 
 Young Nelson smiled uncomfortably. She 
 was talking down to him from such an eminence 
 that he was tempted to improvise an ear-trum- 
 pet, and beg her to shout. Later, at the Crown, 
 Peckham, he asserted that he had done so and 
 "scored off her like billy ohl" Actually, he only 
 faltered "'Nelly'?" with interrogation; whereat 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 263 
 
 she said, "Yes, Ellen Terry. Well, I must skipl 
 Glad to seen you," and forgot to shake hands. 
 
 She wished, ridiculously, that "fame," in truth, 
 were tedious to her; she had wished it often 
 of her silly wish had been born her unconvincing 
 lie. The ruffled rose-leaf in her sensational bou- 
 quet was the zest with which she inhaled it, for 
 it reminded her how unused she was to popular- 
 ity. It seemed to her that the one thing needful 
 to set the seal upon her success was, that it 
 shouldn't enrapture her so much; it seemed to 
 her that it must be grand and glorious to be so 
 habituated to adulation that it had lost its thrill, 
 that it left one listless, cold, and sated. She 
 longed to be blase. 
 
 She invited the pit patrons to a view of her, 
 full face, as usual, before settling herself in her 
 seat; and even while she yielded to the tempta- 
 tion, was regretful not of the fatuity of her con- 
 ceit, but of the gusto of her youth. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ANOTHER of the phrases that commended 
 themselves to her taste was, "That sort of thing," 
 as a label for the class of dramatic entertainment 
 with which she had hitherto been associated. 
 "That sort of thing" was eloquent of immeasur- 
 able space between the speaker and the dispar- 
 aged depths. She was aware, with discomfiture, 
 that her future husband was, conspicuously, a 
 creator of "That sort of thing." When, by a 
 passing reference, his melodrama was scoffed at 
 in the dressing-room one night "London Inside 
 Out, and that sort of thing!" she did not say, 
 "I'm engaged to Mr. Tatham." She went on 
 pencilling her scanty eyebrows and simulated un- 
 concern. 
 
 Of course, she meant to marry "poor old 
 Chris" that she should ever marry anybody else 
 after all these ) 7 ears, was unthinkable but, "For 
 mother's sake," she suggested to him that the 
 wedding should be postponed until Christmas. 
 She explained, with a kiss, that "for her to clear 
 out and get married the moment her luck had 
 
 266 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 267 
 
 turned would be awfully rough on poor old 
 mother." And, for another thing, the run of 
 Forsyth's piece was coming to an untimely end, 
 and it was more than likely that in August she 
 would be up to her eyes in the rehearsals of a 
 new part. "It would be a fearful muddle to get 
 married at the same time." 
 
 There was no longer any allusion between her 
 and Tatham to her leaving the stage. She was 
 now in a position to demand a large salary, and 
 considering the dimensions of his own, he could 
 not dwell on his wish that she should sacrifice the 
 prospect. Already it was manifest to him that 
 her mother's prediction was to be fulfilled he 
 would be the "husband of Miss Peggy Harper." 
 His assent to the proposal that he should pos- 
 sess his soul in patience until Christmas, was 
 forthcoming with such readiness that, if the girl's 
 new egotism had been less prodigious, she would 
 have been wounded in the perception that she was 
 undesired. 
 
 They had discussed the matter at the window 
 in Liverpool Road. Beneath them, Islingtoni- 
 ans passed stiffly in their Sunday black, and in 
 the bedroom Mrs. Harper was taking a siesta. 
 Peggy's spirits had risen; she was feeling much 
 tenderer towards "poor old Chris" now that she 
 was not to marry him so soon. She forsook her 
 
268 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 chair for his knee, and thought what a "good fel- 
 low" he was, and that it was an "awful pity that 
 he wasn't cleverer." As often as she laid her 
 artificialities aside and was once more the out- 
 spoken little gamine that he had known, it was 
 easier for him to fondle her. A tepid affection, 
 stimulated by gratitude for the unexpected 
 respite that she had afforded him, was animating 
 conversation gaily, when she exclaimed, with a 
 sudden change of tone: 
 
 "Oh, bother ! I forgot ! Naomi Knight's com- 
 ing in this afternoon. I do think that every 
 duffer I've ever met in the profession has wor- 
 ried me to find an engagement for her since I've 
 been at the Pic!" 
 
 Mentally the girl on his knee was all at once a 
 thousand leagues from him. 
 
 "You used to be such pals with Naomi!" he 
 remonstrated. 
 
 "Oh, my dear boy!" She had her stuffy stop 
 out again. "I like Naomi very well, but how 
 can I take the responsibility of recommending a 
 woman like that? She's not an artist." 
 
 "She's not inspired," admitted Tatham, "but 
 not many of them are. What is it she wants you 
 to do?" 
 
 "Oh, the piece '11 be going out in the autumn; 
 she wants me to get her into the tour, she wants 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 269 
 
 me to speak to Onslow for her; she wrote that 
 she'd 'be thankful for anything, even for half a 
 dozen lines/ I believe she's in Queer Street. 
 
 . . . It's all very well " She wrinkled her 
 
 forehead and shrugged one shoulder. "In my 
 position, one can't do these things! I mean to 
 say, how can I advise Onslow, or W. B., to take 
 Naomi Knight?" 
 
 "I should have thought she could have played 
 a small part quite as well as anybody else they're 
 likely to get for the money," he said drily. "She 
 has had plenty of experience." 
 
 "Not in pieces like this; she hasn't the finish; 
 they'll want it played in the same tone on the 
 road as it's played at the Pic. Her manner's 
 not West End enough. I mean to say, Naomi's 
 all right in the No. 2 towns, and that sort of thing, 
 but she hasn't got the style for first-class com- 
 panies. . . . It's a very difficult thing to say to 
 her, of course, but" her critical head was shaken 
 ponderously "it's astonishing she doesn't see it 
 for herself. 'Pon my word, it's extraordinary, 
 the kind of people that go into the profession I 
 the more one sees of it, the more extraordinary 
 ft is!" 
 
 When Naomi Knight arrived, a sadder and a 
 shabbier figure than when he had last met her 
 after the greetings had been exchanged and 
 
270 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 the feigned cheerfulness of the first few minutes 
 was past it was painful to Tatham to feel how 
 sensitive the woman was to the girl's professional 
 distance from her now. She had no hesitation 
 in unveiling her necessities before him, and as 
 she said deprecatingly, conscious of the suppli- 
 ant's embarrassment, how "grateful" she would 
 be if Peggy would "put in a word for her," his 
 thoughts flashed back to the lodging over the 
 dairy and refreshment rooms, where they used to 
 call each other "ducky," and romp. 
 
 She was a mediocre actress, but she loved her 
 calling loved it with her heart and her brain 
 and she was no longer young. When she ex- 
 plained that unless it yielded a pittance to her 
 shortly, she would have to give it up and "go in 
 for something else," her recognition of the fact 
 that her life had been a failure was not without 
 pathos. She spoke vaguely of "typewriting," 
 or of "dressmaking." Though it appeared to 
 him that it would be far wiser for her to quit the 
 stage than to persist in the struggle to sustain a 
 hand-to-mouth existence on it, she shrank from 
 the final relinquishment of hope so pitiably, that 
 the arrogance of the girl's attitude towards her 
 jarred him as inhuman. 
 
 Peggy had not the faintest idea that she was 
 being inhuman, nothing was further from her 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 271 
 
 thoughts than to be or to sound unkind ; she was 
 merely actuated by a desire to parade her posi- 
 tion, lest the other might fail to apprehend its 
 splendours to the full. But every note in her 
 voice was offensive, and the girl who had once 
 boasted that she "never forgot a pal" talked to 
 the woman as she might have talked to a child. 
 
 "Well, as you ask my opinion," she said, al- 
 though it was not her opinion that had been asked, 
 but her help, "I'd strongly advise you to go in 
 for anything you can typewriting, dressmak- 
 ing, whatever it is ! I mean to say, supposing I 
 did go to Onslow and say, 'Look here, you've got 
 to do this for me, she's a friend of mine on the 
 rocks and she'll be all right in the part/ sup- 
 posing I did do it, what'd it amount to? What's 
 the use of just one engagement? It wouldn't 
 be a long one either I mean to say, the only busi- 
 ness the piece'll do'll be in the No. 1 towns; it 
 won't play to the gas in the places where they're 
 used to rough-and-tumble melodrama and that 
 sort of thing it'll be quite over their heads it's 
 much too clever and zoological. I see a very 
 short tour for it, a very short tour. I told W. B. 
 so frankly the other day. Well, in two or three 
 months you'd be on your uppers again ! I mean 
 
 to say, one can't er I couldn't keep on 
 
 I tell you honestly, my dear girl, I don't see any 
 
72 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 future for you in the profession! To make any- 
 thing like a position to-day is most enormously 
 difficult. You haven't a notion what hundreds 
 of women there are clever women, too, in their 
 way who'll never do any good.'* 
 
 "Haven't I?" muttered Naomi. 
 
 "I tell you what it is, to come to the front on 
 the stage to-day, a girl has got to be something 
 <juite out of the common. They want a lot! 
 there's no doubt about it. There's so much ordi- 
 nary talent knocking around that for a girl to 
 come to the front to-day she's got to be different 
 to anybody else, she's got to be able to " 
 
 "She wasn't talking about 'coming to the 
 front'!" interrupted Tatham hotly. "She'd be 
 satisfied with a couple of pounds a week to go on 
 with; wouldn't you, Miss Knight?" 
 
 "I'd take twenty-five shillings," said the 
 woman. 
 
 Peggy's gesture was intolerant. "And that's 
 just where it is! the profession's chock-a-block 
 with actresses who're good enough for twenty- 
 five shillings a week. They're the most difficult 
 people in the world to do anything for !" 
 
 "I see your point," said Naomi bitterly. "I'm 
 sorry I bothered you. It isn't always the gen- 
 iuses that get to the front, though," she added, 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 278 
 
 turning to Tatham; "a good many rotters get 
 there and a good many clever girls are too poor 
 to afford to die in a sanatorium. You saw Elsie 
 L/ane was dead?" 
 
 He had not seen it; he gazed at her, startled. 
 
 "It's in The Referee. Of course, she'd been 
 ill for years consumption. I heard a little 
 while ago she was starving; she tried as long as 
 she could to hide how ill she was, but they say she 
 looked so dreadful towards the end that she 
 couldn't get an engagement at any money." 
 
 "Is that so?" he murmured. The poignancy 
 of it pierced him no less keenly because the trag- 
 edy was told in the hard, careless tones of a 
 woman quivering under her own humiliation. 
 He remembered his last glimpse of Elsie Lane, 
 and cursed himself that he hadn't spoken to her. 
 As vivid as his view of it in the Strand was his 
 memory of the sick girl's painted face painted, 
 as he understood now, to mask the ravages of 
 disease and enable her to earn her bread in the 
 theatre. Farther back he looked, into a town 
 whose name he had forgotten, and walked beside 
 her through white, empty streets, and stood, 
 wishing her "luck," on a doorstep. 
 
 "There's a mention of me again in The Refl" 
 said Peggy, displaying a copy of the paper Ian- 
 
274 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 guidly. She pointed to a line in the Answers to 
 Correspondents. "Seen this, Naomi? 'Student 
 of the Drama: Miss Peggy Harper's favourite 
 flower is the lily of the valley.' ' 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 WHEN Theodosia told Tatham that she would 
 like to retain the copy of Shams for a little while 
 longer, she had said it with an audacious project 
 in her mind; and what passed between them sub- 
 sequently, modified, but did not annul, the plan. 
 She no longer dreamed of the delight of asking 
 him to come to see her and proclaiming that a 
 distinguished dramatic critic thought highly of 
 his comedy, but she did continue to think of beg- 
 ging a distinguished critic to read it, and to scrib- 
 ble an encouraging line on the subject if he found 
 the comedy as meritorious as she expected him 
 to do. 
 
 Pritchard did not go to The Aspect office very 
 often, and she had not been presented to him 
 until she had been on the staff for two or three 
 months. Since then, she had seen him several 
 times. More than once he had sat on a table and 
 talked to her it was occasionally difficult to as- 
 sociate his diatribes on the paper with his sim- 
 plicity on the table and she did not think the 
 amiable authority would refuse her petition if she 
 
 275 
 
276 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 showed herself conscious of asking a very great 
 favour. 
 
 An opportunity for asking it was slow to ar- 
 rive. But he did not refuse. Indeed, he con- 
 sented at once, because he was under the impres- 
 sion that the play of her preamble had been 
 written by herself. When she haltingly ex- 
 plained that it was by the author of London In- 
 side Out, however, she became distressfully aware 
 of a light of amusement in Mr. Pritchard's eyes. 
 
 "You aren't going to be prejudiced against it, 
 Mr. Pritchard?" she pleaded. "This is the man's 
 real work the kind of work he wants to do and 
 always has done, excepting in that one wretched 
 case. If I had had the courage, I'd have 
 scratched his name off it before I showed it to 
 
 you. Do read it " She blundered to a 
 
 breakdown. 
 
 "'Fairly'?" He peered at her, with a wry 
 smile. 
 
 "I wasn't going to say 'fairly/ " she stam- 
 mered, "I was going to say 'attentively.' ' 
 
 "I'll read it quite attentively enough to form 
 an opinion," he promised her. "That's all right. 
 But it won't advance Mr. er Tatham in the 
 slightest degree, you know, if I like it." 
 
 An undesigned inflexion apprised her that few 
 things were more improbable to his mind than 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 277 
 
 that he would like it. And, as a matter of fact, 
 his interest had abated so much that in the course 
 of half an hour the roll that he was carrying was 
 an object of aversion to him. 
 
 Many weeks passed before she heard his ver- 
 dict, and her expectations had subsided consid- 
 erably in the meanwhile. 
 
 "Well, I've read your friend's play, Miss 
 Moore," he announced hesitatingly. "I can't 
 say I think he has treated his subject in the hap- 
 piest way." 
 
 So much for her hope! She faltered, "Oh?" 
 
 "I think it was bad judgment to make his hero 
 a writing man. Why a writing man? Hasn't 
 Mr. Tatham heard of politicians, or inventors, 
 or manufacturers, or engineers, or men in any 
 other walk of life outside the arts? His purpose 
 in Shams is to present an interesting study of a 
 man's struggles to get on and he puts the man 
 in a profession that doesn't interest the public in 
 the least. Short-sighted! To choose an author 
 as the protagonist of an English play or of an 
 English novel is to handicap the thing from 
 the word 'go'; no writer who knew his business 
 would do it. What do you suppose the public 
 care about somebody's difficulties in placing his 
 manuscripts? If a dramatist or a novelist aims 
 at awakening interest in the study of a career, it's 
 
278 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 folly for him to choose an artistic career we 
 aren't in France. In France it's done again and 
 again, but in the land of good art and bad smells 
 the public's tastes are infinitely better and in- 
 finitely worse than ours. Of course the French 
 talk a very great deal more about les economies 
 than about les arts, but for all that, above the 
 level of apaches, Frenchmen who don't take any 
 interest whatever in art and literature are even 
 scarcer than Englishmen who do. Mr. Tat- 
 ham's a very acute observer, I'm surprised he 
 doesn't recognise the limitations of the audience 
 he's writing for." 
 
 "Oh, you do think he shows observation?" she 
 said eagerly. "You don't think his work is 
 you find something to say for it, then?" 
 
 "I think very highly of his work," replied 
 Pritchard, in a key of protest, as if he had said 
 so already. "I think he lacks one very desirable 
 quality when I say 'desirable' I mean desirable 
 for long runs he lacks the so-called optimism 
 that's always popular; he shows afflictions to be 
 afflictions, instead of representing them as ulti- 
 mate boons. If a nurse girl went mad and cut 
 the baby's throat in a play of Mr. Tatham's, we 
 shouldn't be told at the end that the baby's par- 
 ents, and the nurse girl's were filled with the 
 peace of perceiving that all things worked mys- 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 279 
 
 teriously for some great and illuminative bless- 
 ing. That's a mistake, commercially. No bland 
 lie can be too preposterous to win wide approval. 
 Say black is rose colour. Millions will smack 
 their lips over the statement, and call the man 
 who questions it a 'pessimist.' The national defi- 
 nition of a 'pessimist' is 'One who faces unwel- 
 come facts.' 'Pessimist' and 'optimist' are the 
 two most misused words in the English language. 
 And, of course, Shams hasn't any titled person- 
 ages in it. If Mr. Tatham always writes about 
 the middle classes I'm afraid he'll find that an- 
 other commercial drawback." 
 
 "You are," faltered the girl, with more pride 
 and happiness than she dared to show, "taking 
 Mr. Tatham very seriously, aren't you?" 
 
 "Certainly I'm taking him very seriously. I'm 
 bound to say I don't foresee his making a fortune 
 in the theatre though even that's largely a mat- 
 ter of luck but I think he ought to make a big 
 reputation. I want to send Shams to Onslow 
 I was talking to him about it the other day and 
 he said he'd like to consider it.'* 
 
 "Oh!" she gasped. "But Mr. Onslow refused 
 it as 'unsuitable' months agol'* 
 
 "That's irrelevant," said Pritchard; "this time 
 he's going to read it. Of course he mayn't see 
 any money in it. But if Onslow doesn't feel in- 
 
280 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 clined to risk a production of it, it ought to be 
 shown to somebody else I'd like to see Shams 
 get a chance somewhere. And anyhow," he 
 added, "I think that he'll be quite sure to read 
 anything that Mr. Tatham sends to him in fu- 
 ture." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 BUT as Theodosia felt that Tatham had made 
 it impossible for her to correspond with him, and 
 as it was equally out of the question for her to 
 suggest to Mr. Pritchard that he should do more 
 than he had generously done, the author of 
 Shams remained unaware that his prospects had 
 an upward tendency. In this, his position dif- 
 fered widely from that of Peggy, who was con- 
 scious of being more valuable every day. 
 
 Her anticipations had been realised. Soon 
 after she left the Piccadilly she had been offered 
 an engagement at the Waterloo and had asked 
 for a contract at fifty pounds a week, and got it. 
 She was not performing in the new part with so 
 much seeming intelligence as she had performed 
 in the part of "Daphne," because the instruction 
 afforded to her at the Waterloo, though patient 
 and painstaking, had lacked the quality of in- 
 spiration; but she reproduced Forsyth's "fetch- 
 ing and natural" smile with a tilted chin and her 
 hands behind her back, and playgoers, having ac- 
 cepted her as delightful, continued to admire 
 
 281 
 
28* THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 her. The management found it financially 
 sound to put ten five-pound notes in an envelope 
 every week for a girl who, troublesome though 
 she was to teach, had the adherence of the 
 Press and public. (Subsequent managements 
 were equally complacent when she acquired the 
 nerve to demand seventy-five pounds, and a hun- 
 dred.) In the occupation which is given the 
 most publicity the calling in which an artist like 
 Elsie Lane had suffered in want and died in 
 squalor this puppet had despotically "ar- 
 rived." 
 
 And already the blare of the trumpets was 
 duller to her ears already she regarded homage 
 as her birthright. She no longer enjoyed ec- 
 statically, and wished, like a precocious child, that 
 her delight were less. That childish wish had 
 been the final impulse of a moribund simplicity. 
 Keenly now she was alive to nothing but the im- 
 mensity of her consequence in the social scheme. 
 Diligently as she dwelt on every word of a com- 
 plimentary criticism, she read the compliment, 
 not with gratitude, but with a sense of her in- 
 comparable superiority to the scribes who praised 
 her if she knew nothing else about them, she 
 knew that they were very poorly paid. Intellect 
 impressed her not at all. Fame itself, other than 
 histrionic fame, meant nothing to her. By this 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 283 
 
 time the eminent men who had had the curiosity 
 to approach her were fairly numerous, and their 
 celebrity had not abashed her in the least she 
 too could boast celebrity; and as to the value of 
 their achievements, she was too ignorant to be 
 aware of it. She chatted to an R.A. and a Cab- 
 inet Minister with an unrestraint tinged by con- 
 descension. To an illustrious man of letters, 
 whose name she had never heard before, she was 
 rather rude. 
 
 It was not the girl's fault : she had been a good- 
 natured, unpretentious little Cockney with a 
 warm heart. It was the fault of the Cabinet 
 Minister, the R.A., and the man of letters, of 
 their wives and their daughters, and of a Press 
 that pandered to an idolatry which it privately 
 condemned : it was the fault, in fine, of the age in 
 which she lived. Truly she believed and Lon- 
 don had conspired to persuade her that the 
 world of the theatre was the most important un- 
 der Heaven ; truly she believed that she shone ef- 
 fulgent in it by right of genius. 
 
 She could not escape the reflection that when 
 she married a clerk she would be committing an 
 act of sensational self-sacrifice. 
 
 Alternately she was proud to think how gen- 
 erous she was, and surprised that poor old Chris 
 didn't see for himself that it "wouldn't do." To 
 
284 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 be sure, he had intimated something of the sort 
 when she told him that her salary was to be fifty 
 pounds a week, but he had allowed her to talk 
 him over. In looking back, she was inclined to 
 blame him for that, forgetting the nature of the 
 protests she had made. If she were a man, she 
 didn't think she'd find it good enough 1 But of 
 course, Chris was weak. If he hadn't been weak, 
 would he have stuck in a clerkship all these years? 
 Since he couldn't write plays, he should have done 
 something else. What course had been open to 
 him she did not profess to decide, but he should 
 have buckled to! A concomitant of her inordi- 
 nate self-esteem was, naturally, a lofty intoler- 
 ance of failure. 
 
 She developed with rapidity an intolerance of 
 many things of restaurants that were not quite 
 the smartest, and of any champagne that wasn't 
 the "only one worth drinking," though, of a truth, 
 she could discover no difference between that and 
 others, excepting under the prices on the wine 
 list. Presents and invitations lost their novelty, 
 and the chit who had felt important at the sight 
 of a Clapham waiter opening her bottle of beer, 
 was now airily familiar with what she called the 
 "meenew" of the Savoy. Not long since intro- 
 duced to her first liqueur, she asserted listlessly 
 that she "always took green chartrooce." She 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 285 
 
 developed the habit of being late for appoint- 
 ments when she contrived to remember them at 
 all. Twice she had arranged with Tatham to 
 meet her at the stage door, and dismissed him, 
 after he had waited for twenty-five minutes in a 
 draught, with the hurried explanation that "some 
 people had asked her to supper." 
 
 But when, raging, he broke the engagement 
 off, her better self, or her vanity, was wounded, 
 and she did not approve his independence after 
 all. Having cried and sulked for a week, she 
 sent a little penitent letter to him, which made 
 him feel that he was a brute for returning to her 
 unwillingly. 
 
 It was about a fortnight after the reconcilia- 
 tion that one day, when he went to her in Keppel 
 Street Liverpool Road had been abandoned 
 he found her very natural and meek. She was 
 nibbling a pencil forlornly, and struggling to 
 write a description of her histrionic methods. 
 
 "Oh, I say!" she exclaimed, "I am glad you've 
 come in I was going to drop you a postcard. 
 I don't know how to do this beastly thing." 
 
 He learnt that she had been petitioned to con- 
 tribute to a series of articles that was appearing 
 in The Beholder, under the heading, "How I 
 Study a Part." In the present emergency her 
 mother had proved useless, and the sight of a 
 
28Q THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 copy of the paper in which two columns of twad- 
 dle had been written, or signed, by Miss, Clytie 
 Pateward had increased her eagerness to figure 
 in the series herself. 
 
 "Do you see?" she said. *Td have my photo 
 in the middle, and my name printed three times. 
 It'd be an awful pity to miss the ad! You might 
 think of something for me, Chris, Have a cig, 
 and tell me what to say." 
 
 "What have you said?" he asked. "How have 
 you begun?" 
 
 "I've only done a little bit. 'I study a part by 
 first learning the lines, and then I work them up.' 
 That's all I've written so far." 
 
 "That isn't much, is it?" 
 
 "Well, I don't know any more to say about it," 
 she said fretfully. "I'm sick of the job I've 
 been sitting here for an hour I . , . I can't make 
 out how Pateward's written such a lot. I've read 
 it twice, but I can't say the same things that she 
 does. I don't know what they've sent the rotten 
 thing to me for it's no help to me. Lot of flap, 
 [just to show how clever she is 1" 
 
 "That's what you've got to do!" 
 
 "Well, I know all about that, but I'm an 
 actress, I'm not an authoress. . . . You might 
 cut in and be useful," she coaxed. 
 
 "Of course I will," he said readily. "I'm no 
 
.THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 287 
 
 good at it either, but I'll do all I can. Tell me 
 how you do study a part. Then we'll make some- 
 thing of it between us; we'll try to dress it up 
 and make it sound pretty." 
 
 She regarded him open-mouthed, and her gaze 
 wandered. For a cold, disquieting moment she 
 realised that the way she "studied" a part was to 
 do in it exactly as she was told. For a moment 
 only. "There were some things too what-d'ye- 
 jcall-it to be expressed!" 
 
 "Oh, well," she faltered, "I don't know just 
 what I do. Look what my notices say!" 
 
 He nodded. He understood her better than 
 her critics did. 
 
 "I suppose," he sighed, "that you might say 
 that when you get a new part you lie awake all 
 night thinking about it?" 
 
 "Oh yes," she agreed; "that's it!" She licked 
 the pencil. ' 'I study a part by first learning the 
 lines, and then I work them up, and then I lie 
 awake all night No, that doesn't sound 
 
 right! Oh, I say, do come on! It's giving me 
 the hump." 
 
 "I should begin differently. I should say 
 I should say that when a part is first handed 
 to you, you feel . . . well, you feel awfully 
 shy- 
 
 "Shy?" 
 
288 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "Yes, 'shy.' You feel awfully shy, as if it 
 were a stranger that you'd got to make friends 
 with." 
 
 "Do you think I ought to feel 'shy'?" she 
 demurred. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he said impatiently; "it's going to 
 show how clever you are directly. You feel aw- 
 fully shy, as if it were a stranger that you had to 
 make friends with; and then, by degrees, you 
 forget that it's a part you seem to be speaking 
 your own thoughts. In fact, you're not quite 
 sure on the first night whether you're Peggy 
 Harper, or the girl in the play. . . . They'll lap 
 that up." 
 
 "Yes, that's the ticket!" she said. She scrib- 
 bled for a few seconds, and contemplated a 
 tangled sentence hopelessly. "But how where 
 which way do I start? Oh!" She flung the 
 pencil in a tantrum across the room. "Let it 
 rip ! . . . 'Tis a shame, 'tis a shame ! You might 
 do it for me can't you do it for me, Chris? Do 
 it at home for me, there's a dear! Do it for me 
 at home, and bring it to me on Sunday. Do it 
 for me by Sunday, and then you can come and 
 read me what you've done. Won't you? I'd 
 like to be in The Beholder. Do write it at home 
 for me, Chris, there's a good chap !" 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 289 
 
 It was an easy matter to offer a suggestion, 
 but a more difficult one to produce an article 
 which was the reason why very little of the non- 
 sense in the "How I Study a Part" series was 
 written by the actors and actresses themselves. 
 But by dint of taking a good deal of pains, since 
 he was not a journalist, Tatham succeeded in 
 producing that article "By Miss Peggy Harper" 
 which shed pleasure in so many English homes. 
 He even took considerable interest in accomplish- 
 ing it, although he was writing with his tongue 
 in his cheek. Perhaps less for Peggy's sake than 
 to humour his own taste, he sought to make this 
 contribution the best that the series would con- 
 tain. He toned down statements which on sec- 
 ond thoughts appeared conceited; he invented 
 emotions for her, and then deleted them. His 
 efforts to steer a middle course between the 
 egotistical and the colourless delayed him vastly? 
 
 But when he had finished fabricating her in- 
 genuous confidences to the public, she sounded a 
 little darling her sweet simplicity was as de- 
 lightful as her brilliant gifts. 
 
 It was not without a glow of satisfaction that 
 he bore his work to her on Sunday. A postcard 
 urging him to come to middle-day dinner, and 
 to "bring that thing with him," had reached him 
 
290 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 the previous afternoon, and he had replied by 
 telegram that he wouldn't fail. 
 
 A taxi-cab was waiting before the house, and 
 the sitting-room was empty when he entered it. 
 But he heard her voice and her mother's behind 
 the folding doors. Peggy came in swiftly. She 
 had on a hat, and was plainly pressed for time. 
 Her white blouse, fastened at the throat with a 
 brooch depicting a couple of tennis rackets, was 
 sprinkled with various bits of cheap jewellery 
 which her means had permitted her recently to 
 acquire. Under the rackets, a wish-bone, a tur- 
 quoise horse-shoe, and a bedizened safety-pin 
 were followed by a pendant proclaiming that her 
 Christian name began with a P. Westward, a 
 watch hung. To the North-east, a silver insect, 
 with amethyst wings, would have been solitary 
 but for a "Chaste design, set with fine quality 
 pearls, at <l 10s." A yard or two of chain en- 
 circling her neck became a loop line to a true- 
 lover's knot of red enamel before its terminus in 
 a bunch of charms at her waist. 
 
 "Oh, I say, I'm awfully sorry, but I've got to 
 go out," she said carelessly. "Mother's not go- 
 ing, you'll stop just the same." Her glance fell 
 on the article. "Is that it? I haven't got time 
 to look at it now I must bolt." 
 
 By the whitening of his face it was revealed to 
 
POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 her that he was very angry. To justify herself, 
 she explained, with a quick frown: 
 
 "I'm going to lunch with Dicker, the airman." 
 
 "Dicker be damned," said Tatham quietly. 
 "Where you're concerned, I don't play second 
 fiddle to Dicker, or anyone else. I'm tired of it. 
 . . . I thought we had settled all this once and 
 for all?" 
 
 "Yes well, I've changed my mind," she said. 
 
 "I haven't changed mine," said he. 
 
 "Think I'm going to let everything slide to 
 please you?" Her voice was high. "I've got 
 something else to think about, I give you my 
 word! What next? One'd think you were I 
 don't know what!" 
 
 Something, the protrusion of a surly mouth, 
 the timbre of the coarse defiance, jerked his re- 
 membrance to an afternoon when her mother had 
 reviled him. 
 
 "I'm the man you're engaged to marry. And 
 while we are engaged, you've got to count me 
 'first.' If that isn't good enough, the engage- 
 ment isn't good enough." 
 
 ' 'Good enough' !" she cried derisively. 
 "Crumbs! don't make me laugh, I've got a 
 cracked lip." 
 
 After a moment Tatham said, trembling: 
 
892 THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 "You'd better make haste your taxi's out- 
 fiide, ticking away twopences." 
 
 Behind the folding doors, which had been im- 
 perfectly closed, Betsjr Harper sat rocking with 
 pleasure on a trunk, 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 IN the sunlight of a morning four years later 
 Christopher Tatham was absorbed by the task of 
 transferring lobelia from the pots in which it had 
 arrived to the soil of a circular flower-bed. And 
 the earth smelt good to him. It was one of those 
 fair, allusive mornings when the garden of a 
 semi-detached villa is not one rod, pole, or perch 
 smaller than the imagination of the tenant, and 
 the labourer was feeling that his limited lawn 
 extended as far as the heart of Nature. It was 
 one of those mornings when the suburban house- 
 holder bustles for his train with a wistful glance 
 at the verdure behind his gate; and the author, 
 whose breakfast-room window had afforded a 
 view of neighbours bustling for their trains, 
 paused in his occupation of planting lobelia, to 
 realise anew that he need never go to the City any 
 more. 
 
 The thought was wonderfully arresting, and 
 the flower-pots lay neglected. 
 
 "Slacking?" laughed Theodosia. She herself 
 was very indolent, in a basket chair under a 
 
 293 
 
294 3?HJE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER 
 
 laburnum tree, with an illustrated paper on her 
 lap. "There are some sugar-plums for you in 
 this week's number," she said; "and there's a pic- 
 ture of a lady you used to know." 
 
 "Theo, something's happened I need never 
 go to the City any more 1" 
 
 "That's lovely!" she smiled. "When did you 
 find it out to-day, or three years ago?" 
 
 "Just this minute all over again!" 
 
 Her gaze deepened. He loitered closer to her. 
 
 "I believe you'd rather have been a gardener 
 than anything else," she told him. 
 
 "Oh, writing's not bad sometimes. . . !Foi* 
 don't care for it as you did?" 
 
 She reflected. "I've so much else to care for 
 now," she explained happily. 
 
 "I wonder if he'll write?" said Tatham. "I 
 don't want him to." 
 
 "I don't know what I want Baby to be." 
 
 "Not a writing-man. . . . We shall soon have 
 to leave off calling him 'Baby,' shan't we?" 
 
 "Oh, there's time enough I" she cooed. 
 
 "I shouldn't like the Bar for him," declared 
 the father, after a pause, remembering his own 
 father. 
 
 "Nor the Church," said she, thinking of hers. 
 ... "I don't know why you should mind his 
 writing, though; you've nothing to complain of 
 
THE POSITION OF PEGGY HARPER S95 
 
 now unless you're eager for thousands a year?" 
 
 "I don't know that thousands a year are very 
 necessary," he murmured. "You and he, that's 
 the kind of thing that really matters to a man. 
 I've everything I want. . . . Show me the sugar- 
 plums in the paper I'm always grateful for 
 my sugar-plums." 
 
 "Look at the picture first!" she said. 
 
 It was a picture of a girl in a reefer and a pilot 
 cap, smiling, with a tilted chin, and her hands 
 behind her back. Under it was printed: "Miss 
 Peggy Harper, whose engagement to Lord 
 Capenhurst, was recently announced. Like her 
 fiance, Miss Harper has always been devoted to 
 yachting." 
 
 "It's a funny world," said Tatham thought- 
 fully. 
 
 For a space they were silent, looking back 
 marvelling at the minuteness of big things past. 
 . . . The strangeness of their being here together 
 swayed them both; for an instant the suburban 
 garden held all the mystery of life. Both re- 
 viewed a love that had been an exquisite illusion : 
 the man was conscious that the woman by his 
 side was far removed from the girl whom he had 
 idealised : the woman knew that her husband was 
 a world away from the lover of whom she used 
 to dream. ... In the contentment of a perfect 
 
understanding they turned to each other and 
 their hands touched. 
 
 "Hark!" he exclaimed, alarmed. 
 
 "He's crying!" gasped Theodosia. 
 
 The paper fell on the grass as they; ran up- 
 stairs to Baby. 
 
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