JOHN'S first impulse had been to pour out in Miss Hamilton's ears the tale of his wrongs, and afterward, when he had sufficiently impressed her with the danger of the position in which the world was trying to place them, to ask her to marry him as the only way to escape from it. On second thoughts, he decided that she might be offended by the suggestion of having been compromised by him and that she might resent the notion of their marriage's being no more than a sop to public opinion. He therefore abandoned the idea of enlarging upon the scandal their association had apparently created and proposed to substitute the trite but always popular scene of the prosperous middle-aged man's renunciation of love and happiness in favor of a young and penurious rival. He recalled how many last acts in how many sentimental comedies had owed their success to this situation, which never failed with an audience. But then the average audience was middle-aged. Thinking of the many audiences on which from private boxes he had looked down, John was sure that bald heads always predominated in the auditorium; and naturally those bald heads had been only too ready to nod approval of a heroine who rejected the dashing jeune premier to fling herself into the arms of the elderly actor-manager. It was impossible to think of any infirmity severe enough to thwart an actor-manager. Yet a play was make-believe: in real life events would probably turn out quite differently. It would be very depressing, if he offered to make Doris and Hugh happy together by settling upon them a handsome income, to find Doris jumping at the prospect. Perhaps it would be more prudent not to suggest any possibility of a marriage between them. It might even be more prudent not to mention the subject of marriage at all. John looked at his secretary with what surely must have been a very eloquent glance indeed, because she dropped her pencil, blushed, and took his hand.

"How much simpler life is than art," John murmured. He would never have dared to allow one of his heroes in a moment of supreme emotion like this to crane his neck across a wide table in order to kiss the heroine. Any audience would have laughed at such an awkward gesture; yet, though he only managed to reach her lips with half an inch to spare, the kiss was not at all funny somehow. No, it ranked with Paolo's or Anthony's or any other famous lover's kiss.

"And now of course I can't be your secretary any longer," she sighed.

"Why? Do you disapprove of wives' helping their husbands?"

"I don't think you really want to get married, do you?"

"My dear, I'm absolutely dying to get married."

"Truly?"

"Doris, look at me."

And surely she looked at him with more admiration than he had ever looked at himself in a glass.

"What a time I shall have with mother," she gasped with the gurgling triumphant laugh of a child who has unexpectedly found the way to open the store-cupboard.

"Oh, no, you won't," John prophesied, confidently. "I'm not going to have such an excellent last scene spoilt by unnecessary talk. We'll get married first and tell everybody afterwards. I've lately discovered what an amazing capacity ordinary human nature has for invention. It really frightens me for the future of novelists, who I cannot believe will be wanted much longer. Oh no, Doris, I'm not going to run the risk of hearing any preliminary gossip about our marriage. Neither your mother nor my relations nor the general public are going to have any share in it before or after. In fact to be brief I propose to elope. Notwithstanding my romantic plays I have spent a private life of utter dullness. This is my last opportunity to do anything unusual. Please, my dearest girl, let me experience the joys of an actual elopement before I relapse into eternal humdrummery."

"A horrid description of marriage!" she protested.

"Comparative humdrummery, I should have said, comparative, that is to say, with the excesses attributed to me by rumor. I've often wanted to write a play about Tiberius, and I feel well equipped to do so now. But I'm serious about the elopement. I really do want to avoid my relations' tongues."

"I believe you're afraid of them."

"I am. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm in terror of them," he said.

"But where are we going to elope to?"

John picked up the Times.

"If only the Murmania," he began. "And by Jove, she will too," he cried. "Yes, she's due to sail from Liverpool on April 1st."

"But that's your birthday," she objected.

"Exactly."

"And I've already sent out those invitations."

"Exactly. For some years my relations have made an April fool of me by dining at my expense on that day. I have two corner-cupboards overflowing with their gifts—the most remarkable exhibition of cheapness and ingenuity ever known. This year I am going to make April fools of them."

"By marrying me?" she laughed.

"Well, of course it's no use pretending that they'll be delighted by that joke, though I intend to play another still more elaborately unpleasant. At the back of all their minds exists one anxiety—the dispositions of my last will and testament. Very well. I am going to cure that worry forever by leaving them Ambles. I can't imagine anything more irritating than to be left a house in common with a number of people whom you hate. Oh, it's an exquisite revenge. Darling secretary, take down for dictation as your last task the following:

"'I, John Touchwood, playwright, of 36 Church Row, Hampstead, N.W., and Ambles, Wrottesford, Hants, do hereby will and bequeathe.'"

"I don't understand," she said. "Are you really making a will? or are you only playing a joke?"

"Both."

"But is this really to take effect when you're dead? Oh dear, I wish you wouldn't talk about death when I've just said I'll marry you."

John paused thoughtfully:

"It does seem rather a challenge to fate," he agreed. "I know what I'll do. I'll make over Ambles to them at once. After all, I am dead to them, for I'll never have anything more to do with any of them. Cross out what you took down. I'll alter the form. Begin as for a letter:

"Type that out, please, Miss Hamilton, while I drive down to Doctors Commons to see about the license and book our passage in the Murmania."

John had never tasted any success so sweet as the success of these two days before his forty-third birthday; and he was glad to find that Doris having once made up her mind about getting married showed no signs of imperilling the adventure by confiding her intention to her mother.

"Dear John," she said, "I bolted to America with Ida Merritt last year without a word to Mother until I sent her a wireless from on board. Surely I may elope with you ... and explain afterwards."

"You don't think it will kill her," suggested John a little anxiously. "People are apparently quite ready to accuse one of breaking a maternal heart as lightly as they would accuse one of breaking an appointment."

"Dear John, when we're married she'll be delighted."

"Not too delighted, eh, darling? I mean not so delighted that she'll want to come and gloat over us all day. You see, when the honeymoon's over, I shall have to get to work again on that last act, and your mother does talk a good deal. I know it's very intelligent talk, but it would be rather an interruption."

The only person they took into their confidence about the wedding, except the clergyman, the verger, and a crossing-sweeper brought in to witness the signing of the register was Mrs. Worfolk.

"Well, that's highly satisfactory! You couldn't have chosen a nicer young lady. Well, I mean to say, I've known her so long and all. And you expect to be back in June? Oh well, I shall have everything nice and tidy you may be sure. And this letter you want handed to Mr. James to be read to the family on your birthday? And I'm to give them their dinners the same as if you were here yourself? I see. And how many bottles of champagne shall I open? Oh, not to stint them? No, I quite understand. Of course, they would want to drink your healths. Certainly. And so they ought! Well, I'm bound to say I wish Mr. Worfolk could have been alive. It makes me quite aggravated to think he shouldn't be here. Well, I mean to say, he being a family carpenter had helped at so many weddings."

The scene on the Murmania did not differ much from the scene on board the same ship six months ago. John had insisted that Doris should wear her misty green suit of Harris tweed; but he himself had bought at the Burlington Arcade a traveling cap that showed plainly the sobering effects of matrimony. In the barber's saloon he invested in a pair of rope-soled shoes; he wanted to be sure of being able to support his wife even upon a heeling deck. Before dinner they went forward to watch the stars come out in the twilight—stars that were scarcely as yet more luminous in the green April sky than daisies in a meadow. They stood silent listening to the splash of the dusky sea against the bows, until the shore lamps began to wink astern.

"How savage the night looks coming after us," said John. "It's jolly to think that in the middle of all that blackness James is reading my birthday welcome to the family."

"Poor dears!"

"Oh, they deserve all they've got," he said, fiercely. "And to think that only six months ago I was fool enough to read their letters of congratulation quite seriously in this very ship. It was you with your remark about poor relations that put your foot through my picture."

"You're very much married already, aren't you, John?"

"Am I?"

"Yes, for you're already blaming me for everything."

"I suppose this is what James would call one of my confounded sentimental endings," John murmured.

"Whatever he called it, he couldn't invent a better ending himself," she murmured back. "You know, critics are very like disappointed old maids."

The great ship trembled faintly in the deeper motion, and John holding Doris to him felt that she too trembled faintly in unison. They stood like this in renewed silence until the stars shone clearly, and the shore lamps were turning to a gold blur. John may be excused for thinking that the bugle for dinner sounded like a flourish from Lohengrin. He had reason to feel romantic now.

THE END

image of the book's back cover