When Mr. J.G. Reeder went to the theatre (and his going at all was contingent upon his receiving a complimentary ticket) he invariably chose a melodrama, and preferably a Drury Lane melodrama, where to the thrill of the actors’ speeches was added the amazing action of wrecked railway trains, hair-raising shipwrecks and terrific horse-races in which the favourite won by a nose. Such things may seem wildly improbable to blase dramatic critics-especially favourites winning-but Mr. Reeder saw actuality in all such presentations.
Once he was inveigled into sitting through a roaring farce, and was the only man in the house who did not laugh. He was, indeed, such a depressing influence that the leading lady sent a passionate request to the manager that ‘the miserable-looking old man in the middle of the front row’ should have his money returned and be requested to leave the theatre. Which, as Mr. Reeder had come in on a free ticket, placed the manager in a very awkward predicament.
Invariably he went unaccompanied, for he had no friends, and fifty-two years had come and gone without bringing to his life romance or the melting tenderness begot of dreams. In some manner Mr. Reeder had become acquainted with a girl who was like no other girl with whom he had been brought into contact. Her name was Belman, Margaret Belman, and he had saved her life, though this fact did not occur to him as frequently as the recollection that he had imperilled that life before he had saved it. And he had a haunting sense of guilt for quite another reason.
He was thinking of her one day-he spent his life thinking about people, though the majority of these were less respectable than Miss Margaret Belman. He supposed that she would marry the very goodlooking young man who met her street car at the corner of the Embankment every morning and returned with her to the Lewisham High Road every night. It would be a very nice wedding, with hired motorcars, and the vicar himself performing the ceremony, and a wedding breakfast provided by the local caterer, following which bride and bridegroom would be photographed on the lawn surrounded by their jovial but unprepossessing relatives. And after this, one specially hired car would take them to Eastbourne for an expensive honeymoon. And after that all the humdrum and scrapings of life, rising through villadom to a little car of their own and Saturday afternoon tennis parties.
Mr. Reeder sighed deeply. How much more satisfactory was the stage drama, where all the trouble begins in the first act and is satisfactorily settled in the last. He fingered absently the two slips of green paper that had come to him that morning. Row A, seats 17 and 18. They had been sent by a manager who was under some obligation to him. The theatre was the Orpheum, home of transpontine drama, and the play was ‘The Fires of Vengeance.’ It looked like being a pleasant evening.
He took an envelope from the rack, addressed it to the box office, and had begun to write the accompanying letter returning the surplus voucher, when an idea occurred to him. He owed Miss Margaret Belman something, and the debt was on his conscience. He had once, for reasons of expediency, described her as his wife. This preposterous claim had been made to appease a mad woman, it is true, but it had been made. She was now holding a good position-a secretaryship at one of the political headquarters, for which post she had to thank Mr. J.G. Reeder, if she only knew it.
He took up the ‘phone and called her number, and, after the normal delay, heard her voice.
‘Er-Miss Belman,’ Mr. Reeder coughed, ‘I have-er-two tickets for a theatre tonight. I wonder if you would care to go?’
Her astonishment was almost audible.
‘That is very nice of you, Mr. Reeder. I should love to come with you.’
Mr. J.G. Reeder turned pale.
‘What I mean is, I have two tickets-I thought perhaps that your-er-your-er-that somebody else would like to go-what I mean was-’
He heard a gentle laugh at the other end of the phone.
‘What you mean is that you don’t wish to take me,’ she said, and for a man of his experience he blundered badly.
‘I should esteem it an honour to take you,’ he said, in terror that he should offend her, ‘but the truth is, I thought-’
‘I will meet you at the theatre-which is it? Orpheum-how lovely! At eight o’clock.’
Mr. Reeder put down the instrument, feeling limp and moist. It is the truth that he had never taken a lady to any kind of social function in his life, and as there grew upon him the tremendous character of this adventure he was overwhelmed and breathless. A murderer waking from dreams of revelry to find himself in the condemned cell suffered no more poignant emotions than Mr. Reeder, torn from the smooth if treacherous currents of life and drawing nearer and nearer to the horrid vortex of unusualness.
‘Bless me,’ said Mr. Reeder, employing a strictly private expression which was reserved for his own crises.
He employed in his private office a young woman who combined a meticulous exactness in the filing of documents with a complete absence of those attractions which turn men into gods, and in other days set the armies of Perseus moving towards the walls of Troy. She was invariably addressed by Mr. Reeder as ‘Miss.’ He believed her name to be ‘Oliver.’ She was in truth a married lady with two children, but her nuptials had been celebrated without his knowledge.
To the top floor of a building in Regent Street Mr. Reeder repaired for instruction and guidance.
‘It is not-er-a practice of mine to-er-accompany ladies to the theatre, and I am rather at a loss to know what is expected of me, the more so since the young lady is-er-a stranger to me.’
His frosty-visaged assistant sneered secretly. At Mr. Reeder’s time of life, when such natural affections as were not atrophied should in decency be fossilised!
He jotted down her suggestions.
‘Chocolates indeed? Where can one procure – ? Oh, yes, I remember seeing the attendants sell them. Thank you so much, Miss-er-’
And as he went out, closing the door carefully behind him, she sneered openly.
‘They all go wrong at seventy,’ she said insultingly.
Margaret hardly knew what to expect when she came into the flamboyant foyer of the Orpheum. What was the evening equivalent to the square-topped derby and the tightly-buttoned frock coat of ancient design which he favoured in the hours of business? She would have passed the somewhat elegantly dressed gentleman in the correct pique waistcoat and the perfectly tied butterfly bow, only he claimed her attention.
‘Mr. Reeder!’ she gasped.
It was indeed Mr. Reeder: with not so much as a shirt-stud wrong; with a suit of the latest mode, and shoes glossy and V-toed. For Mr. Reeder, like many other men, dressed according to his inclination in business hours, but accepted blindly the instructions of his tailor in the matter of fancy raiment. Mr. J.G. Reeder was never conscious of his clothing, good or bad-he was, however, very conscious of his strange responsibility.
He took her cloak (he had previously purchased programmes and a large box of chocolates, which he carried by its satin ribbon). There was a quarter of an hour to wait before the curtain went up, and Margaret felt it incumbent upon her to offer an explanation.
‘You spoke about “somebody” else; do you mean Roy-the man who sometimes meets me at Westminster?’
Mr. Reeder had meant that young man. ‘He and I were good friends,’ she said, ‘no more than that-we aren’t very good friends anymore.’
She did not say why. She might have explained in a sentence if she had said that Roy’s mother held an exalted opinion of her only son’s qualities, physical and mental, and that Roy thoroughly endorsed his mother’s judgment, but she did not.
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Reeder unhappily. Soon after this the orchestra drowned further conversation, for they were sitting in the first row near to the noisiest of the brass and not far removed from the shrillest of the