The Summons | Page 8

the flickering pictures of the year the first was the clearest. A
great railway station in the West of England, a train drawn up at the
departure platform, herself with a veil drawn close over her face, half
running, half walking in a pitiful anguish towards the train; and then a
man at her elbow. Harry Luttrell.
"I have reserved a compartment. I suspected that things were not going

to turn out well. I thought the long journey to London alone would be
terrible. If things had turned out right, you would not have seen me."
She had let him place her in a carriage, look after her wants as if she
had been a child, hold her in his arms, tend her with the magnificent
sympathy of his silence. That had been the real beginning. Stella had
known him as the merest of friends before. She had met him here and
there at a supper party, at a dancing club, at some Bohemian country
house; and then suddenly he had guessed what others had not, and
foolishly had gone out of his way to be kind.
"She would have died if I hadn't travelled with her," Luttrell argued
silently. "She would have thrown herself out of the carriage, or when
she reached home she would have----" and his argument stopped, and
he glanced at her uneasily.
Undisciplined, was the epithet she had used of herself. You never knew
what crazy thing she might do. There was daintiness but no order in her
life; the only law she knew was given to her by a fastidious taste.
"Of course, Wub, I have always known that you never cared for me as I
do for you. So it was bound to end some time." She caught his hand to
her heart for a second, and then, dropping it, ran from his side.
CHAPTER III
MARIO ESCOBAR
Late in the autumn of the following year a new play, written by Martin
Hillyard and named "The Dark Tower," was produced at the Rubicon
Theatre in Panton Street, London. It was Hillyard's second play. His
first, produced in April of the same year, had just managed to limp into
July; and that small world which concerns itself with the individualities
of playwrights was speculating with its usual divergencies upon
Hillyard's future development.
"The Dark Tower" was a play of modern days, built upon the ancient
passions. The first act was played to a hushed house, and while the

applause which greeted the fall of the curtain was still rattling about the
walls of the theatre, Sir Charles Hardiman hoisted himself heavily out
of his stall and made his way to a box on the first tier, which he entered
without knocking.
There was but one person in the box, a young man hidden behind a side
curtain. Hardiman let himself collapse into a chair by the side of the
young man.
"Seems all right," he said. "You have a story to tell. It's clear in every
word, too, that you know where you are going. That makes people
comfortable and inclined to go along with you."
Hillyard turned with a smile.
"We haven't come to the water jump yet," he said.
Hardiman remained in the box during the second act. He watched the
stage for a while, took note of the laughter which welcomed this or that
line, and of the silence which suddenly enclosed this or that scene from
the rest of the play; and finally, with a certain surprise, and a certain
amusement he fixed his attention upon the play's author. The act ended
in laughter and Hillyard leaned back, and himself laughed, without
pose or affectation, as heartily as any one in the theatre.
"You beat me altogether, my young friend," said Hardiman. "You
ought to be walking up and down the pavement outside in the classical
state of agitation. But you appear to be enjoying the play, as if you
never had seen it before."
"And I haven't," Hillyard returned. "This isn't quite the play which we
have been learning and rehearsing during the last month. Here's the
audience at work, adding a point there, discovering an
interpretation--yes, actually an interpretation--there, bringing into
importance one scene, slipping over the next which we thought more
important--altering it, in fact. Of course," and he returned to his earlier
metaphor, "I know the big fences over which we may come a cropper. I
can see them ahead before we come up to them and know the danger.

We are over two of them, by the way. But on the whole I am more
interested than nervous. It's the first time I have ever been to a first
night, you see."
"Well, upon my word," cried Hardiman, "you are the coolest hand at it
I ever saw."