The advent of Mr. Higgs completed his satisfaction, for the audience greeted the comedian with roars of applause. As a rule Eckleton took its drama through the medium of third-rate touring companies, which came down with plays that had not managed to attract London to any great extent, and were trying to make up for failures in the metropolis by long tours in the provinces. It was seldom that an actor of the Higgs type paid the town a visit, and in a play, too, which had positively never appeared before on any stage. Eckleton appreciated the compliment.
“Listen,” said Fenn’s brother. “Isn’t that just the part for him? It’s just like he was in the dressing room, eh? Short sentences and everything. The funny part of it is that I didn’t know the man when I wrote the play. It was all luck.”
Mr. Higgs’ performance sealed the success of the piece. The house laughed at everything he said. He sang a song in his gasping way, and they laughed still more. Fenn’s brother became incoherent with delight. The verdict of Eckleton was hardly likely to affect London theatregoers, but it was very pleasant notwithstanding. Like every playwright with his first piece, he had been haunted by the idea that his dialogue “would not act,” that, however humorous it might be to a reader, it would fall flat when spoken. There was no doubt now as to whether the lines sounded well.
At the beginning of the second act the great Higgs was not on the stage, Fenn’s brother knowing enough of the game not to bring on his big man too soon. He had not to enter for ten minutes or so. The author, who had gone down to see him during the interval, stayed in the dressing room. Fenn, however, who wanted to see all of the piece that he could, went up to the “flies” again.
It occurred to him when he got there that he would see more if he took the seat which his brother had been occupying. It would give him much the same view of the stage, and a wider view of the audience. He thought it would be amusing to see how the audience looked from the “flies.”
Mr. W. S. Gilbert once wrote a poem about a certain bishop who, while fond of amusing himself, objected to his clergy doing likewise. And the consequence was that whenever he did so amuse himself, he was always haunted by a phantom curate, who joined him in his pleasures, much to his dismay. On one occasion he stopped to watch a Punch and Judy show,
“And heard, as Punch was being treated penally,
That phantom curate laughing all hyaenally.”
The disgust and panic of this eminent cleric was as nothing compared with that of Fenn, when, shifting to his brother’s seat, he got the first clear view he had had of the audience. In a box to the left of the dress-circle sat, “laughing all hyaenally,” the following distinguished visitors:
-
Mr. Mulholland of No. 7 College Buildings,
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Mr. Raynes of No. 4 ditto,
and
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Mr. Kay.
Fenn drew back like a flash, knocking his chair over as he did so.
“Giddy, sir?” said a stage hand, pleasantly. “Bless you, lots of gents is like that when they comes up here. Can’t stand the ’eight, they can’t. You’ll be all right in a jiffy.”
“Yes. It—it is rather high, isn’t it?” said Fenn. “Awful glare, too.”
He picked up his chair and sat down well out of sight of the box. Had they seen him? he wondered. Then common sense returned to him. They could not possibly have seen him. Apart from any other reasons, he had only been in his brother’s seat for half-a-dozen seconds. No. He was all right so far. But he would have to get back to the house, and at once. With three of the staff, including his own housemaster, ranging the town, things were a trifle too warm for comfort. He wondered it had not occurred to him that, with a big attraction at the theatre, some of the staff might feel an inclination to visit it.
He did not stop to say goodbye to his brother. Descending from his perch, he hurried to the stage door.
“It’s in the toobs that I feel it, sir,” said the doorkeeper, as he let him out, resuming their conversation as if they had only just parted. Fenn hurried off without waiting to hear more.
It was drizzling outside, and there was a fog. Not a “London particular,” but quite thick enough to make it difficult to see where one was going. People and vehicles passed him, vague phantoms in the darkness. Occasionally the former collided with him. He began to wish he had not accepted his brother’s invitation. The unexpected sight of the three masters had shaken his nerve. Till then only the romantic, adventurous side of the expedition had struck him. Now the risks began to loom larger in his mind. It was all very well, he felt, to think, as he had done, that he would be expelled if found out, but that all the same he would risk it. Detection then had seemed a remote contingency. With three masters in the offing it became at least a possibility. The melancholy case of Peter Brown seemed to him now to have a more personal significance for him.
Wrapped in these reflections, he lost his way.
He did not realise this for some time. It was borne in upon him when the road he was taking suddenly came to an abrupt end in a blank wall. Instead of being, as he had fancied, in the High Street, he must have branched off into some miserable
