BRIGHT EYES—AND A FLY
The Hermitage (unrivalled scenery, superb cuisine, Daniel Brewster, proprietor) was a hotel in the green of the mountains, by Archie’s father-in-law after he of the Cosmopolis. Mr. Brewster himself there, to his attention on his New York establishment; and Archie and Lucille, in the dining-room some ten days after the recorded in the last chapter, had to be with two out of the three of the place. Through the window at their a of the was visible; some of the superb was already on the table; and the that the in for Daniel Brewster, proprietor, Archie, at any rate, with no of loss. He it with and with positive enthusiasm. In Archie’s opinion, all a place needed to make it an Paradise was for Mr. Daniel Brewster to be about forty-seven miles away from it.
It was at Lucille’s that they had come to the Hermitage. Never a sunbeam, Mr. Brewster had such a to the world, and particularly to his son-in-law, in the days the Pongo incident, that Lucille had that he and Archie would for a time at least be apart—a view with which her husband agreed. He had his at the Hermitage, and now he the with the of a healthy man who is well.
“It’s going to be another perfectly day,” he observed, the landscape, from which the were away like of smoke. “Just the day you ought to have been here.”
“Yes, it’s too I’ve got to go. New York will be like an oven.”
“Put it off.”
“I can’t, I’m afraid. I’ve a fitting.”
Archie no further. He was a married man of old to know the of fittings.
“Besides,” said Lucille, “I want to see father.” Archie an of astonishment. “I’ll be to-morrow evening. You will be perfectly happy.”
“Queen of my soul, you know I can’t be happy with you away. You know—”
“Yes?” Lucille, appreciatively. She of Archie say this of thing.
Archie’s voice had off. He was looking across the room.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed. “What an woman!”
“Where?”
“Over there. Just in, I say, what eyes! I don’t think I saw such eyes. Did you notice her eyes? Sort of flashing! Awfully woman!”
Warm though the was, a of upon the breakfast-table. A to come into Lucille’s face. She not always Archie’s fresh enthusiasms.
“Do you think so?”
“Wonderful figure, too!”
“Yes?”
“Well, what I to say, to medium,” said Archie, a amount of that which man above the level of the of the field. “Not the of type I myself, of course.”
“You know her, don’t you?”
“Absolutely not and from it,” said Archie, hastily. “Never met her in my life.”
“You’ve her on the stage. Her name’s Vera Silverton. We saw her in—”
“Of course, yes. So we did. I say, I wonder what she’s doing here? She ought to be in New York, rehearsing. I meeting what’s-his-name—you know—chappie who plays and what not—George Benham—I meeting George Benham, and he told me she was in a piece of his called—I the name, but I know it was called something or other. Well, why isn’t she?”
“She her and her and came away. She’s always doing that of thing. She’s for it. She must be a woman.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to talk about her. She used to be married to someone, and she him. And then she was married to someone else, and he her. And I’m her wasn’t that colour two years ago, and I don’t think a woman ought to make up like that, and her dress is all for the country, and those pearls can’t be genuine, and I the way she her about, and pink doesn’t her a bit. I think she’s an woman, and I wish you wouldn’t keep on talking about her.”
“Right-o!” said Archie, dutifully.
They breakfast, and Lucille up to pack her bag. Archie out on to the the hotel, where he smoked, with nature, and of Lucille. He always of Lucille when he was alone, when he to himself in like those provided by the the Hotel Hermitage. The longer he was married to her the more did the to him a good egg. Mr. Brewster might their marriage as one of the world’s most incidents, but to Archie it was, and always had been, a of all right. The more he of it the more did he that a girl like Lucille should have been to link her with that of a Class C like himself. His were, in fact, what a happily-married man’s ought to be.
He was from them by a of or almost at his elbow, and to that the Miss Silverton was him. Her in the sunlight, and one of the was up. The other at Archie with an of appeal.
“There’s something in my eye,” she said.
“No, really!”
“I wonder if you would mind? It would be so of you!”
Archie would have to remove himself, but no man of the name can to come to the of in distress. To the lady’s upper and into it and at it with the of his was the only open to him. His may be as not but definitely praiseworthy. King Arthur’s used to do this of thing all the time, and look what people think of them. Lucille, therefore, out of the hotel just as the operation was concluded, ought not to have the she did. But, of course, there is a about the of a man who is taking a out of a woman’s which may upon the of his wife. It is an which a of or or, as Archie would have put it, what not.
“Thanks so much!” said Miss Silverton.
“Oh no, not,” said Archie.
“Such a in your eye.”
“Absolutely!”
“I’m always doing it!”
“Rotten luck!”
“But I don’t often anyone as as you to help me.”
Lucille called upon to in on this of and of soul.
“Archie,” she said, “if you go and your now, I shall just have time to walk with you my train goes.”
“Oh, ah!” said Archie, her for the time. “Oh, ah, yes, right-o, yes, yes, yes!”
On the way to the it to Archie that Lucille was and in her manner; and it to him, not for the time in his life, what a support a clear is in moments of crisis. Dash it all, he didn’t see what else he have done. Couldn’t the female about the place with of in her eyeball. Nevertheless—
“Rotten thing a in your eye,” he at length. “Dashed awkward, I mean.”
“Or convenient.”
“Eh?”
“Well, it’s a very good way of with an introduction.”
“Oh, I say! You don’t you think—”
“She’s a woman!”
“Absolutely! Can’t think what people see in her.”
“Well, you to over her!”
“No, no! Nothing of the kind! She me with what-d’you-call-it—the of thing do with, you know.”
“You were all over your face.”
“I wasn’t. I was just up my the sun was in my eye.”
“All of to be in people’s this morning!”
Archie was saddened. That this of should have on such a day and at a moment when they were to be for about thirty-six hours him feel—well, it gave him the pip. He had an idea that there were which would have out, but he was not an man and not them. He aggrieved. Lucille, he considered, ought to have that he was as with and experimentally-coloured hair. Why, it, he have from the of Cleopatra with one hand and Helen of Troy with the other, simultaneously, without them a second thought. It was in mood that he played a nine holes; had life for him when he came to the hotel two hours later, after Lucille off in the train to New York. Never till now had they had anything a quarrel. Life, Archie felt, was a of a wash-out. He was and jumpy, and the of Miss Silverton, talking to somebody on a in the of the hotel lobby, sent him off at right and him up with a against the which the room-clerk sat.
The room-clerk, always of a disposition, was saying something to him, but Archie did not listen. He mechanically. It was something about his room. He the word “satisfactory.”
“Oh, rather, quite!” said Archie.
A devil, the room-clerk! He perfectly well that Archie his room satisfactory. These on like this so as to try to make you that the management took a personal in you. It was part of their job. Archie and in to lunch. Lucille’s empty seat at him mournfully, his of desolation.
He was half-way through his lunch, when the chair opposite to be vacant. Archie, transferring his from the the window, that his friend, George Benham, the playwright, had from and was now in his midst.
“Hallo!” he said.
George Benham was a man gave him the look of a owl. He to have something on his mind the of black which over his brow. He wearily, and ordered fish-pie.
“I I saw you come through the just now,” he said.
“Oh, was that you on the settee, talking to Miss Silverton?”
“She was talking to me,” said the playwright, moodily.
“What are you doing here?” asked Archie. He have Mr. Benham elsewhere, for he on his gloom, but, the being those present, it was only to talk to him. “I you were in New York, the of your old drama.”
“The are up. And it looks as though there wasn’t going to be any drama. Good Lord!” George Benham, with warmth, “with opportunities opening out one on every side—with life to one with hands—when you see coal-heavers making fifty a week and the who clean out the going happy and about their work—why a man choose a job like plays? Job was the only man that who was to a play, and he would have it going if his leading woman had been anyone like Vera Silverton!”
Archie—and it was this fact, no doubt, which for his of such a large and circle of friends—was always able to his own in order to to other people’s hard-luck stories.
“Tell me all, laddie,” he said. “Release the film! Has she walked out on you?”
“Left us flat! How did you about it? Oh, she told you, of course?”
Archie to try to the idea that he was on any such terms of with Miss Silverton.
“No, no! My wife said she it must be something of that nature or order when we saw her come in to breakfast. I to say,” said Archie, closely, “woman can’t come into here and be in New York at the same time. Why did she the raspberry, old friend?”
Mr. Benham helped himself to fish-pie, and spoke through the steam.
“Well, what was this. Knowing her as as you do—”
“I don’t know her!”
“Well, anyway, it was like this. As you know, she has a dog—”
“I didn’t know she had a dog,” Archie. It to him that the world was in to link him with this woman.
“Well, she has a dog. A great of a bulldog. And she it to rehearsal.” Mr. Benham’s with tears, as in his he a of fish-pie some eighty-three Fahrenheit than it looked. In the by this his mind a of the story, and, when he was able to speak again, he said, “So then there was a of trouble. Everything loose!”
“Why?” Archie was puzzled. “Did the management object to her the dog to rehearsal?”
“A of good that would have done! She what she in the theatre.”
“Then why was there trouble?”
“You weren’t listening,” said Mr. Benham, reproachfully. “I told you. This dog came up to where I was sitting—it was dark in the of the theatre, you know—and I got up to say something about something that was on the stage, and somehow I must have it a push with my foot.”
“I see,” said Archie, to the of the plot. “You her dog.”
“Pushed it. Accidentally. With my foot.”
“I understand. And when you off this kick—”
“Push,” said Mr. Benham, austerely.
“This or push. When you this or push—”
“It was more a of light shove.”
“Well, when you did you did, the trouble started?”
Mr. Benham gave a shiver.
“She talked for a while, and then walked out, taking the dog with her. You see, this wasn’t the time it had happened.”
“Good Lord! Do you your whole time doing that of thing?”
“It wasn’t me the time. It was the stage-manager. He didn’t know dog it was, and it came on to the stage, and he gave it a of pat, a of flick—”
“A slosh?”
“Not a slosh,” Mr. Benham, firmly. “You might call it a tap—with the promptscript. Well, we had a of her over that time. Still, we managed to do it, but she said that if anything of the again she would up her part.”
“She must be of the dog,” said Archie, for the time a touch of and the lady.
“She’s about it. That’s what it so when I happened—quite inadvertently—to give it this of shove. Well, we the of the day trying to her on the ’phone at her apartment, and we that she had come here. So I took the next train, and to her to come back. She wouldn’t listen. And that’s how stand.”
“Pretty rotten!” said Archie, sympathetically.
“You can it’s rotten—for me. There’s nobody else who can play the part. Like a chump, I the thing for her. It means the play won’t be produced at all, if she doesn’t do it. So you’re my last hope!”
Archie, who was a cigarette, nearly it.
“I am?”
“I you might her. Point out to her what a on her back. Jolly her along, you know the of thing!”
“But, my dear old friend, I tell you I don’t know her!”
Mr. Benham’s opened their of glass.
“Well, she you. When you came through the just now she said that you were the only being she had met.”
“Well, as a of fact, I did take a out of her eye. But—”
“You did? Well, then, the whole thing’s simple. All you have to do is to ask her how her is, and tell her she has the most you saw, and a bit.”
“But, my dear old son!” The programme which his friend had out Archie. “I can’t! Anything to and all that of thing, but when it comes to cooing, Napoo!”
“Nonsense! It isn’t hard to coo.”
“You don’t understand, laddie. You’re not a married man. I to say, you say for or against marriage—personally I’m all for it and it a egg—the that it makes a a as a cooer. I don’t want to dish you in any way, old bean, but I must and to coo.”
Mr. Benham rose and looked at his watch.
“I’ll have to be moving,” he said. “I’ve got to to New York and report. I’ll tell them that I haven’t been able to do anything myself, but that I’ve left the in good hands. I know you will do your best.”
“But, laddie!”
“Think,” said Mr. Benham, solemnly, “of all that on it! The other actors! The small-part people out of a job! Myself—but no! Perhaps you had touch very or not at all on my with the thing. Well, you know how to it. I I can it to you. Pitch it strong! Good-bye, my dear old man, and a thousand thanks. I’ll do the same for you another time.” He moved the door, Archie transfixed. Half-way there he and came back. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “my lunch. Have it put on your bill, will you? I haven’t time to and settle. Good-bye! Good-bye!”
