In his new position he received a good salary, and it was his mother’s idea that she should come to Salterton and keep house for him. But Hector thought otherwise. He preferred to live at the YMCA, in a room which he had partly furnished himself and to eat at the Snak Shak. The habit of overeating which had been imposed upon him in childhood persisted, and at thirty he was already paunchy. He pointed this out to his mother as evidence that he was quite able to look after himself, far more capable of doing without her than was the Reverend James McKinnon, who had grown much older in appearance, but whether as a consequence of pastoral duties, or as the outcome of a diet of stewed beef, pie and soda crackers it was impossible to tell. Mrs Mackilwraith had saved almost every penny that Hector had ever sent her, and it never occurred to her to move out of the manse. The unfortunate McKinnon had even given up dreaming of such a thing; he lived as a lodger in his own house, the victim of other people’s thoughtfulness and generosity.
Prosperity wrought slowly but surely upon Hector. After four years as a department head, he began to feel that the social side of his life needed attention, and through acquaintances who were interested in it he was drawn into the Salterton Little Theatre. He was elected to the treasurership almost at once, and he showed to advantage in that office. He was always in the background when theatre parties were given, smiling and drinking one drink. He liked to be where people were gay, but he did not permit an uncontrolled gaiety in himself. He liked to see pretty women running about in a state of excitement, and he liked the Little Theatre lingo, copied from the professional theatre, in which “dear” and “darling” were customary forms of address; but he never made use of such endearments himself. And it was a fact, though it was of interest to no one but Hector, that he had never known any intimacy—no, not the slightest—with a woman. There had been that terrible business at the Normal School “At Home”—but he had driven that down into the cellarage of his mind, and had almost forgotten it.
He was forty when he decided that he would like to act, and planned and exercised his common sense to secure for himself the part of Gonzalo.
Three
Roger Tasset glanced around the clubroom with the sure eye of a connoisseur, to see if there was anything there which was of interest to him. He had been in Salterton for six weeks and except for a couple of routine flirtations with waitresses he had had no association with women of the kind which he valued. If he couldn’t start something soon, he told himself, he would go off his head with boredom. It was useless to deceive himself; he simply had to have women.
Roger was extremely careful not to deceive himself upon this point; indeed, it was a matter on which he offered himself constant reassurance. Most men, without being conscious of the fact, spend a great deal of time and effort in bringing about circumstances which will enable them to support an ideal portrait of themselves which they have created. Roger, from a very early age, had thought of himself as a devil with women, and in consequence he was continually obliged to seek women with whom he could be devilish. He was not of a reflective temperament, and thus it could not be said of him that he embraced libertinage as a philosophy or a way of life, as did Don Juan. But he had convinced himself that sex meant more to him than it did to most men, and that by attracting and seducing women he was being true to his nature and fulfilling a rather fine destiny.
Unlike as they were in external things, Roger shared Hector’s faith in planning and common sense, and he had applied these principles to his career of seduction. And as many things respond well to planning and common sense, he had succeeded in seducing quite a number of women between his eighteenth year and his present age of twenty-five. He sincerely believed that women were all alike, and it was certainly true that those with whom he had been successful shared many characteristics in common. For one thing, they all showed an abandon which was foreign to Roger’s nature; he never consummated a conquest without taking precautions which would make it impossible for a child to be attributed to him. With girls who might not understand this, he was careful to make it plain. He had a series of little talks, also, about the necessity for taking love lightly, as it came, and for relinquishing it with a smile when it was still in its fairest flower; this convenient attitude was calculated to make any girl who sought to detain him longer than he wished seem unsporting and stuffy. If anyone should think that Roger’s attitude was somewhat calculating and joyless it must be said in his defence that he approached seduction professionally, or as a business; he believed success in that field to be a necessity, without which he would lose faith in his own reality and importance in the world. One does not take risks with the source of one’s self-respect.
Roger was a soldier, good enough to be well thought of by his superiors and not so good as to cause them disquiet by flashes of originality. He had been sent to Salterton for a course of special training. Nellie’s suggestion that he should give temporary assistance to the Little Theatre had come as a godsend to him. He cared nothing for the theatre, but he knew that it was a place where there were likely to be plenty of girls. He had arrived at the clubroom promptly at eight o’clock on the night set aside for the auditions for The Tempest, and found himself among the first half-dozen.
The clubroom was the top floor of an office building. It had been a public hall in the days when people did not mind climbing three flights of stairs in order to attend a political rally or a lantern-slide lecture. It was now a rather seedy place with a low platform at one end. The walls had originally been a disagreeable brown, but the Little Theatre had sought to cheer them by painting them bright yellow to a height of twelve feet; as the hall had a twenty-foot ceiling the effect was not altogether happy. The decorations consisted of pictures of theatrical interest: a programme signed by Sir John Martin Harvey on his last visit to Salterton, a similar memento of Sir Harry Lauder, a signed photograph of Robert B. Mantell as King Lear, another of Genevieve Hamper in The Taming of the Shrew, a telegram of congratulation from Margaret Anglin to the club on its tenth birthday, a printed postcard from Bernard Shaw refusing permission to perform Candida without payment of royalty, and several sets of photographs of past productions. Cupboards for costumes were built against one wall, and behind a screen was a small kitchen, where refreshments could be made. The objects most prominently displayed in the room were two framed certificates testifying that the Little Theatre had distinguished itself in the Dominion Drama Festival.
For the audition, chairs had been arranged in a semicircle with a table facing them. Three of these chairs were now occupied by women who had been mentally dismissed by Roger with the hard words “Total Loss”. Another woman was busy behind the screen, rattling crockery. Two men were in conversation by a window; Roger knew one of them to be Larry Pye and the other was the man whom he had met briefly on that rainy day at St Agnes’—the man who knew about seats—McNabb or some such name.
Roger was bored. It looked as though a dull evening lay before him. He cheered up a few minutes later, however, when a group of girls arrived. He had little time to appraise them, for Mrs Forrester came up the stair, accompanied by Valentine Rich, and Roger gave his whole attention to them; he had always found it excellent policy to keep on good terms with older women; they always liked a fellow with a bit of dash, and their liking was worth having. The Rich woman seemed to be a silent piece; she was polite enough, but she did not glow when Roger gave her his special, intimate smile. Nellie glowed, however, most gratifyingly.