When William Came | Page 3

a lot of them have done because
they felt like doing it, and Murrey will feel like doing it too. That is
where I foresee trouble and disagreement."
Ronnie shrugged his shoulders.
"I would take things tragically if I saw the good of it," he said; "as
matters stand it's too late in the day and too early to be anything but
philosophical about what one can't help. For the present we've just got
to make the best of things. Besides, you can't very well turn down
Gorla at the last moment."
"I'm not going to turn down Gorla, or anybody," said Cicely with
decision. "I think it would be silly, and silliness doesn't appeal to me.
That is why I foresee storms on the domestic horizon. After all, Gorla
has her career to think of. Do you know," she added, with a change of
tone, "I rather wish you would fall in love with Gorla; it would make
me horribly jealous, and a little jealousy is such a good tonic for any
woman who knows how to dress well. Also, Ronnie, it would prove
that you are capable of falling in love with some one, of which I've
grave doubts up to the present."
"Love is one of the few things in which the make-believe is superior to
the genuine," said Ronnie, "it lasts longer, and you get more fun out of
it, and it's easier to replace when you've done with it."
"Still, it's rather like playing with coloured paper instead of playing

with fire," objected Cicely.
A footman came round the corner with the trained silence that tactfully
contrives to make itself felt.
"Mr. Luton to see you, Madam," he announced, "shall I say you are
in?"
"Mr. Luton? Oh, yes," said Cicely, "he'll probably have something to
tell us about Gorla's concert," she added, turning to Ronnie.
Tony Luton was a young man who had sprung from the people, and
had taken care that there should be no recoil. He was scarcely twenty
years of age, but a tightly packed chronicle of vicissitudes lay behind
his sprightly insouciant appearance. Since his fifteenth year he had
lived, Heaven knew how, getting sometimes a minor engagement at
some minor music- hall, sometimes a temporary job as
secretary-valet-companion to a roving invalid, dining now and then on
plovers' eggs and asparagus at one of the smarter West End restaurants,
at other times devouring a kipper or a sausage in some stuffy Edgware
Road eating-house; always seemingly amused by life, and always
amusing. It is possible that somewhere in such heart as he possessed
there lurked a rankling bitterness against the hard things of life, or a
scrap of gratitude towards the one or two friends who had helped him
disinterestedly, but his most intimate associates could not have guessed
at the existence of such feelings. Tony Luton was just a merry-eyed
dancing faun, whom Fate had surrounded with streets instead of woods,
and it would have been in the highest degree inartistic to have sounded
him for a heart or a heartache.
The dancing of the faun took one day a livelier and more assured turn,
the joyousness became more real, and the worst of the vicissitudes
seemed suddenly over. A musical friend, gifted with mediocre but
marketable abilities, supplied Tony with a song, for which he obtained
a trial performance at an East End hall. Dressed as a jockey, for no
particular reason except that the costume suited him, he sang, "They
quaff the gay bubbly in Eccleston Square" to an appreciative audience,
which included the manager of a famous West End theatre of varieties.
Tony and his song won the managerial favour, and were immediately
transplanted to the West End house, where they scored a success of
which the drooping music-hall industry was at the moment badly in
need.

It was just after the great catastrophe, and men of the London world
were in no humour to think; they had witnessed the inconceivable
befall them, they had nothing but political ruin to stare at, and they
were anxious to look the other way. The words of Tony's song were
more or less meaningless, though he sang them remarkably well, but
the tune, with its air of slyness and furtive joyousness, appealed in
some unaccountable manner to people who were furtively unhappy,
and who were trying to appear stoically cheerful.
"What must be, must be," and "It's a poor heart that never rejoices,"
were the popular expressions of the London public at that moment, and
the men who had to cater for that public were thankful when they were
able to stumble across anything that fitted in with the prevailing mood.
For the first time in his life Tony Luton discovered that agents and
managers were a leisured class, and