“We ought all to count the cost before we enter upon any line of conduct, and I would most strongly warn any one against the self-deception of fancying that he who wishes to be an ambassador of peace can do otherwise than weep bitterly.”—Frederick Denison Maurice.

During the weeks that followed, the only thing which marred Ivy’s complete happiness was a certain jealousy of the bright-faced girl they had met at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day. She was constantly asking Ralph questions about Evereld Ewart; at times he seemed pleased to talk of her, at other times his face would grow grave and he would answer only in monosyllables in a way which perplexed his small devotee not a little. However, she gathered that he did not see any more of his old friend and consoled herself by hurrying off to Whiteley’s sale to buy a jacket and hat as much like Evereld’s as her purse would afford.

She wore them for the first time on the foggy February morning when Ralph called for her at her grandfather’s rooms to take her to King’s Cross. For it had been arranged that she should travel with him to Dumfries where he was to place her under the special care of the manager’s wife. The old Professor seemed much depressed when the parting actually came; he kept looking at the child with wistful eyes and slowly counting out money for the journey with a small, a very small surplus, in case of accidents as he said.

“Have you kept enough for yourself?” asked Ivy, throwing her arms round his neck. “I shall be away six months you know.”

“I have enough to last me a couple of months,” said the old man, “with what my pupils will bring in. And by that time you will be able to send me a little. You are to have a good salary—a very good salary and no travelling expenses when once you’re in Scotland.”

“Yes, yes,” said Ivy, gaily. “I shall be as rich as a queen when I come back.”

The old man’s eyes filled with tears.

“Yes, when you come back,” he said, huskily, “When you come back. You will do what you can for her if she needs help?” he added, shaking hands tremulously with Ralph.

“I will, indeed,” said Ralph, heartily; and there was something in his look and tone which satisfied the Professor and robbed the parting of its worst pain.

Ivy, too much excited to feel the leave-taking, sprang into the cab with a joyous sense that at last, like the heroine of a fairy tale, she was setting out into the world to seek her fortune. It was scarcely right that she should be starting with the fairy prince beside her, he ought to have turned up later in the plot and just at some critical moment. Still real life could not always be regulated by the rules of fiction and she reflected that it was much nicer to have him at once.

She leant back in her corner of the third-class carriage, and thought what care he had taken of her, how much more gentle his manner was than the manner of any one else she knew, and how blissful it would be to act with him for six whole months. He did not talk to her very much, being still busy with his parts, but she was quite content with the mere pleasure of his presence and with the delightful novelty of her first long journey. The Company were to play “Macbeth,” “East Lynne,” “Guy Mannering,” “Rob Roy,” “The Man of the World,” “Jeannie Deans,” and several short plays such as “Cramond Brig,” a great favourite in Scotland. Ivy was not well pleased with her parts in “Macbeth,” being cast for Donal Bain, Fleance and Macduff’s boy. But she reflected that in the first part she would always come on with Ralph since he was to play Malcolm, as well as the part of second witch, while later on she should have the pleasure of being killed by him in his character of first murderer. Ralph seeing irrepressible mirth in her face asked what was amusing her.

“I have to call you ‘a shag-haired villain,’” she said, laughing till the tears ran down her face, “and you have to stab me in the fourth act.”

“We will have a private rehearsal then, beforehand,” said Ralph, smiling. “And you will find my red wig very awe-inspiring, I can tell you.”

Ivy looked pityingly at her fellow-travellers, wondering how they endured their humdrum lives, and full of radiant hopes for her own future.

The fogs of London had soon given place to bright sunshine, and it seemed to her that she had left behind all that was cheerless and was going forth into a glorious world of possibilities. It was certainly a red-letter day in her life’s calendar.

The arrival in Scotland, however, was not so cheerful. The cold which they had not greatly noticed in the railway carriage, seemed bitter indeed when they left the train at Dumfries.

It was nearly six o’clock and there was little light left. What there was, revealed snowy roads and slippery pavements. Ivy shivered and clung fast hold of Ralph’s hand as they made their way to the manager’s rooms, a red-headed porter, much resembling the shag-haired murderer in “Macbeth,” going on before them with a luggage truck. He paused at a high house in a particularly dingy street. The door was opened by a shrewd, hard-featured woman who, upon Ralph’s inquiry, told them that Mrs. Skoot was in, and ushered them upstairs to a room where the remains of dinner still lingered on the table, and a large, portly lady, with blonde hair and big cow-like eyes, sat with her feet in the fender reading a novel.

“So there you are, dear,” she said, greeting Ivy affectionately, but retaining a greasy thumb in the book to keep her place. “I’m glad you’ve come, for Mr. Skoot has just arranged to have an extra rehearsal to-night.”

“Is this Mr. Denmead?” she inquired, extending her hand graciously and taking a rapid survey of him from head to foot. “Have you found rooms yet?”

“No, I have not,” said Ralph, his low-toned voice and quiet manner contrasting most curiously with her loud accents. “I was going to ask you if there is any list of lodgings.”

“To be sure,” she said. “Here it is; you’ll find those all very good and reasonable. I’ve known most of them myself in past years.”

Ralph thanked her and turned to go, glancing with some compassion at Ivy. “I shall see you again at rehearsal,” he said. “Mind you have something to eat first.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll see to her,” said Mrs. Skoot, vociferously. “She’s to board with me you know, her grandfather made me promise that. Half-past seven for the rehearsal, don’t forget. Your landlady will be able to direct you to the theatre.”

“What an awful woman!” thought Ralph to himself. “The Professor must be out of his mind to let Ivy be with her for six whole months. She may be all that’s virtuous—but as a constant companion! Poor Ivy! I wonder how such a decent little fellow as Skoot comes to have such a wife!”

At this point in his reflections they reached the first house on his list, but found the rooms already secured by other members of the company. The same result followed the next application, and yet again the next. He began to grow tired of wandering about the snowy streets, and catching sight of a card in a window announcing that rooms were to be had, he paused at a neat but unpretentious house and once more made his inquiry.

A very prim-looking widow appeared in answer to his knock; she seemed favourably impressed with his appearance and mentioned her terms.

“That will do very well. I want the rooms for a week,” said Ralph, longing to get into a house, for he was half-frozen and very hungry.

“I don’t take lodgers that keep late hours,” said the widow, cautiously. “I like to lock up by half-past ten, sir.”

Ralph made an ejaculation of dismay. “I’m afraid I can’t promise that,” he said. “I’m an actor, you see, and am not likely to be in by that time.”

The woman’s whole face stiffened, her very cap seemed to grow as rigid as buckram, her upper lip lengthened. “We only take Christians here,” she said in a severe way, and then without another word she closed the door.

It was the first time he had ever been made to feel himself an outcast on account of his profession, and for a minute the words, by their injustice, stung him. Then his sense of fun conquered and he laughed to himself as he walked on with bent head in the teeth of the bitter, east wind.

Referring once again to the list of professional lodgings, he consulted the porter who told him which was the nearest house, and here he at last got taken in, by a dishevelled but smiling landlady.

“There’s Mr. Dudley, one of Mr. Skoot’s company, in my house now,” she said. “Maybe you could share the sitting-room.”

Ralph hesitated, but without more ado the woman stepped into her front parlour and put the case to the present occupant.

“Oh, by all means,” said a hearty voice; and the door was thrown back and into the narrow passage stepped a tall, powerful-looking man of about forty, his large, clean-shaven face, twinkling eyes, and broad mouth full of good humour. Ralph knew at a glance that it was not at all a face of high type, but it was genial and attractive and it contrasted most singularly with the forbidding face of the widow who only housed Christians.

“Come in, my boy,” said the hearty voice; “you look half frozen.”

“It was the landlady’s proposal,” said Ralph. “You are sure you don’t mind?”

“To be sure not! ‘Mine enemy’s dog, though he had bit me, should stand this night against my fire.’ Skoot was telling me about you. The little brute has called a special rehearsal; you had better look sharp and get something to eat for there’s no knowing how long they will keep us at it. The Skoots were always great hands at rehearsing.”

“You have travelled with them before?”

“Yes, many years ago, and there’s not much love lost between us. Shouldn’t have taken this berth now, if I hadn’t been out of an engagement for some time. I have my doubts if the tour will be a success. Skoot is awfully hampered, you see, by having to run his wife as leading lady.”

Ralph prudently forbore to make any comment, but the thought of acting with Mrs. Skoot was a sort of nightmare to him.

“Have the rest of the company all arrived?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so. There’s little Ivy Grant—she’s coming on very well indeed, devilish pretty girl into the bargain. Then there’s Miss Myra Kay, a brunette, rather prudish, used to be in Macneillie’s company, but lost her health, and is now only just starting afresh. As for the men—well, you’ll see for yourself by-and-by—half of them in my opinion are sticks, and the other half roaring ranters. Hulloa, you’ll find that a bad speculation. Never order coffee in Great Britain, for they don’t know how to make it. Take to whisky, my boy. It’s the only thing for strolling players.”

“Thanks, I detest it,” said Ralph, “and if professional landladies don’t understand coffee-making, why I’ll brew it myself as we used to do at Winchester.”

“I thought you had been at a public school. What made you take up with the stage? Didn’t your people object?”

“I am alone in the world,” said Ralph. “My guardian wanted me to be a parson, but I couldn’t go in for that, and so, being turned out of his house, I thought I would try to realise an old dream of mine and be an actor.”

Dudley had watched him keenly during this speech. He was a man who had led a notoriously evil life, but he had a good deal of kindliness in his nature, and there was something in Ralph’s transparent honesty, in his evident purity of heart and life that appealed to him. Bad as his own record had been he was wholly without the fiendish desire to drag other men down with him.

“Your dreams were probably very unlike the reality.” he said, with a smile. “Are you prepared to rough it?” Ralph laughed, and gave him the account of the straits he had been reduced to, and Dudley having described the merits and drawbacks of a provincial tour under Skoot’s management, suggested that they had better be setting off for the rehearsal.

They had scarcely opened the stage door when Mrs. Skoot’s shrill voice made itself heard. She was vehemently complaining about some mistake made by the baggage man, and the poor harassed culprit stood meekly to receive her angry threats of dismissal, not daring to proffer excuse or explanation. Ivy looking scared and cold, stood not far off; her whole face lighted up when she caught sight of Ralph, and she stole over to whisper in his ear, “Isn’t Mrs. Skoot dreadful?”

“Suggests the queen in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’” he replied, smiling. “Off with his head!”

Ivy was obliged to laugh a little.

“That is Miss Myra Kay,” she said, indicating a pale, slim girl, who was pacing to and fro, book in hand. “I think she is very selfish; they say she hardly speaks to any one, but just takes care of herself and is quite wrapped up in her own affairs.”

“Take care,” said Ralph, warningly; “you may be overheard.”

Dudley now introduced him to one or two of the actors, and before long the manager himself arrived. He seemed in good spirits, greeted Ralph pleasantly, pacified his wife, and promptly set them all to work.

Only too soon, however, they realised that the length of the rehearsal depended on Mrs. Skoot and not on her husband. Although it was no business of hers she seemed unable to refrain from constant interruption and fault-finding, and before the evening was over she had reduced Miss Kay to tears, had tormented poor Ivy into the worst of tempers and had goaded most of the men into a state of sullen wrath.

At last, after four hours of this, Mr. Skoot looked at his watch and announced that it was half-past eleven. Time was the only thing which had ever been known to conquer Mrs. Skoot; she wisely bowed to the inevitable, and having reminded Miss Kay that the call was for eleven on the following morning, she allowed herself to be helped into a handsome fur cloak, and telling Ivy to follow her, quitted the theatre.

Ralph went back to his rooms in low spirits and the next morning did not much mend matters, for they were kept rehearsing from eleven in the morning till five in the afternoon. Had it not been for Dudley’s unfailing good humour, his flashes of fun, and his genial kindliness, Ralph thought he could not have endured so great a contrast to the whole atmosphere of Washington’s theatre.

He began to feel a sort of angry contempt for the manager who seemed but a tool in the hands of his wife and was quite indifferent to the annoyance she gave to others.

But in the evening when “Macbeth” was given, when, for the first time in his life, he had one of Shakspere’s characters to portray, he forgot all the previous misery. Into the comparatively small part of Malcolm he had put an amount of thought and study and imagination which surprised Dudley, and the elder man, as they walked home together, spoke words of hearty commendation and encouragement which cheered the novice’s heart as nothing else could have done.

On the day before they were to leave Dumfries for Ayr, it chanced that, being released earlier than usual from rehearsal, Ralph suggested a walk to Ivy. It was the first chance they had had for any sort of relaxation, and Ivy listened with delight to the proposal of a visit to the grave of Burns and to Lincluden Abbey.

She was not at all pleased when as they drew near to the Burns’ mausoleum they caught sight of Myra Kay. As yet Ralph had made no way at all with this pale, dark-eyed girl, they had scarcely exchanged a dozen words, and her manner was very reserved and distant. All that he knew about her was the little he had gleaned from the men of the company. It was reported that her marriage was to take place in the summer, and that she was engaged to an actor named Brinton who was now in Macneillie’s Company. She had the reputation of being cold, cautious, and conventional, but in comparison with Mrs. Skoot she was so delightful that Ralph felt drawn to her and was chafed by a perfectly clear consciousness that for some reason she disapproved of him. He was pleased when she volunteered a few tepid remarks about Turnerelli’s sculpture, and to Ivy’s disgust he asked her if she would not join them in their walk to Lincluden Abbey.

She hesitated for a moment, then with a glance at his open, boyish face seemed suddenly to arrive at some determination more important than that of the mere decision to take a walk.

“I will come part of the way with you,” she said. “But since my illness I am not much of a walker. It is one of the few grudges I harbour against Mr. Macneillie.”

“You were in his Company?”

“Yes, and at Oxford, while playing in an outdoor representation of ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ got soaked to the skin and had to wear the wet clothes. The rest of them escaped with colds but I was laid up for six months. The manager was extremely good to me I must say, and in August I hope to be back again in his Company.”

“You like him then as a manager?”

“Yes, indeed, there couldn’t be a better. I don’t know how I shall ever endure all these months with the Skoots, and had I known that that scoundrel Dudley was to be in the Company I should never have accepted the engagement.”

Ralph raised his eyebrows. “That’s a severe word,” he said.

“It’s no more than he deserves,” said Myra Kay, frowning. “I am astonished that you can share rooms with him and make him your friend.”

“He is very likely no worse than many others,” said Ralph, nettled by her tone.

“No worse!” she said, scornfully. “Is it possible you do not know that he is the wretch who figured in the Houston case? You must remember it—the stir was so great and it is not eighteen months ago.”

“I was at school eighteen months ago and never troubled my head with causes cÉlÈbres.”

Myra Kay walked on in silence for a few moments; then she briefly told him the facts of the case and was pleased to see him wince.

“The man has been properly punished,” she continued, with satisfaction, “and now no decent manager wall have him—at any rate, till the details of the case are forgotten. He is desperately hard up for money, and every one cuts him. I hope, now that you know all this, you will have no more to say to him.”

“Perhaps he has turned over a new leaf,” said Ralph, looking up from the discoloured track where they were walking to the pure white fields beyond.

Myra Kay gave a sarcastic little laugh.

“You are far too innocent, Mr. Denmead,” she said; and Ralph thought there was an unpleasant touch of patronage in her tone. “Does he look as if he were repenting?”

“Men can’t go about in sackcloth and ashes,” said Ralph; “and you surely wouldn’t have him cultivate a face a yard long? It’s his nature to be full of fun, and, for my part, I would far rather have to do with a man who has been openly punished than with a hypocrite who sins with impunity and goes about posing as a philanthropist.”

He thought resentfully of Sir Matthew.

“I can’t think how you can speak to him,” said Myra Kay bitterly, “For your own sake, and for the sake of the profession, you ought to have nothing to do with him. It was not just a common case of wrongdoing—it was a specially atrocious affair throughout. They say you are the son of a clergyman. I should have thought you would have had better judgment than to mix yourself up with such a man.”

“He is precisely the sort of man my father would have befriended,” said Ralph, warmly. “There was nothing of the Pharisee about him. I remember how when all the village cut a man who had been in prison for some bad offence, he found out the fellow’s one vulnerable point—a love of flowers—and had him up with us at the Rectory the whole of one Bank-holiday, pottering about the garden and greenhouse, and as happy as a king in exchanging plants with us, and helping to bud roses.”

“That may be well enough for a clergyman, but for you—a mere boy, knowing so little of the world—it is different. You ought not to have chosen such a man as your companion.”

“I didn’t choose him,” said Ralph, with some warmth. “An ‘unco guid’ widow shut the door in my face, because I was an actor, and said she only took in Christians. Then at the next place I went to they gave me shelter and kind words, and Dudley was goodness itself to me. If I cut him now I should be a contemptible cad.”

“Well,” said his companion, with a shrug of her shoulders, “you must ‘gang your own gait.’ But remember that I have warned you.”

She turned back soon after this, and Ivy, who had thought the whole discussion very tiresome, skipped for joy when a bend in the road hid her from view.

But Ralph seemed unusually silent, and as they looked at the ruins of the old abbey, Ivy could not at all understand the shadow that seemed to have come over his face.

Not a word ever passed Dudley’s lips about his previous life, but there were not lacking people who promptly told him that Ralph Denmead had just learnt all about it; and when they moved on to Ayr, he said in his blunt way:

“You’ll not care that we should pig together any longer, I daresay?”

“I had much rather share diggings with you than with any of the others,” said Ralph, heartily. “If I’m not in your way, that is? You are the only man who has shown me the least kindness.”

Dudley made an inarticulate exclamation. He was more touched than he would have cared to own.

“You are thankful for small mercies,” he said, “and gratitude is a rare thing in the profession. But I like you, lad, and am glad to have you as a chum. You shall not have cause to be ashamed of me.”

And so throughout the strange vicissitudes of the Scotch tour these two oddly-contrasting characters bore each other company, and for some time Myra Kay kept aloof from them both.