Free Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham Page A

Regent's Park that she liked very much. She wanted to be settled down in good time for her confinement.
    The house faced the gardens. Above the drawing-room floor were two bedrooms and above these, two rooms that could be made into a day and a night nursery. Michael
was pleased with everything; even the price seemed to him reasonable. Julia had, during the last four years, been earning so much more money than he that she had offered to furnish the house herself. They stood in one of the bedrooms.
    'I can make do with a good deal of what we've got for my bedroom,' she said. 'I'll get you a nice suite at Maple's.'
    'I wouldn't go to much expense,' he smiled. 'I don't suppose I shall use it much, you know.'
    He liked to share a bed with her. Though not passionate he was affectionate, and he had an animal desire to feel her body against his. For long it had been her greatest comfort. The thought now filled her with irritation.
    'Oh, I don't think there should be any more nonsense till after the baby's born. Until all that's over and done with I'm going to make you sleep by yourself.'
    'I hadn't thought of that. If you think it's better for the kid...'

8
    Michael got himself demobbed the moment the war was finished and stepped straight into a part. He returned to the stage a much better actor than he left it. The breezi-ness he had acquired in the army was effective. He was a well set-up, normal, high-spirited fellow, with a ready smile and a hearty laugh. He was well suited to drawing-room comedy. His light voice gave a peculiar effect to a flippant line, and though he never managed to make love convincingly he could carry off a chaffing love scene, making a proposal as if it were rather a joke, or a declaration as though he were laughing at himself, in a manner that the audience found engaging. He never attempted to play anyone but himself. He specialized in men about town, gentlemanly gamblers, guardsmen and young scamps with a good side to them. Managers liked him.
He worked hard and was amenable to direction. So long as he could get work he didn't mind much what sort of part it was. He stuck out for the salary he thought he was worth, but if he couldn't get it was prepared to take less rather than be idle.
    He was making his plans carefully. During the winter that followed the end of the war there was an epidemic of influenza. His father and mother died. He inherited nearly four thousand pounds, and this with his own savings and Julia's brought up their joint capital to seven thousand. But the rent of theatres had gone up enormously, the salaries of actors and the wages of stagehands had increased, so that the expense of running a theatre was very much greater than it had been before the war. A sum that would then have been amply sufficient to start management on was now inadequate. The only thing was to find some rich man to go in with them so that a failure or two to begin with would not drive them from the field. It was said that you could always find a mug in the city to write a fat cheque for the production of a play, but when you came down to business you discovered that the main condition was that the leading part should be played by some pretty lady in whom he was interested. Years before, Michael and Julia had often joked about the rich old woman who would fall in love with him and set him up in management. He had long since learnt that no rich old woman was to be found to set up in management a young actor whose wife was an actress to whom he was perfectly faithful. In the end the money was found by a rich woman, and not an old one either, but who was interested not in him but in Julia.
    Mrs de Vries was a widow. She was a short stout woman with a fine Jewish nose and fine Jewish eyes, a great deal of energy, a manner at once effusive and timid, and a somewhat virile air. She had a passion for the stage. When Julia and Michael had decided to try their luck in London Jimmie Langton, to whose rescue she had sometimes