Free Twopence Coloured by Patrick Hamilton

, an amount of free-and-easy puttings in of lumps of sugar, a quantity of most cheeky Finger-excusing with respect to the cake, and a whole lot of brilliantly casual Askings-for-more and grudging admissions of Enough, which all testified in their way to a new and unconstrainedly humorous intimacy which you could have hardly believed possible half an hour ago. Indeed, by the time they had finished their high tea, and had rushed upstairs for their hats and coats, and had helped each other on with them in the narrow hallway : and by the time they were walking briskly down the star-lit, frosty streets to the theatre, Jackie had awakened not only to the exhilarating consciousness that the world was at her feet again, but also to the calm pride of fore-knowledge that her friend might be relied upon to make love to her at any moment in the near future…. For many had loved Jackie, and she had learnt to read the signs. She was too familiar with these sudden leaping intimacies, these infectious, inexplicable ebulliences of spirit between two strangers, not to know their eventual outcome.
    Jackie never forgot that walk to the theatre; and the evening went on from thrill to thrill. And when, as they approached the theatre, they saw a little queue of early-door enthusiasts dismally sheltering themselves from the wind; and when, as they entered the rosy, lit, and yet hushed and unpopulated foyer, he went to the box office and employed his magic professional influence on her behalf; and when, as they emerged again, she stopped before a poster of the play (which was “The Devil’s Disciple,” by George Bernard Shaw) and observed that his name, Richard Gissing, led all the rest — it was as though the portals of fame were swinging back before her. Or, better still, it was as though she were being let into fame by some intimate side-entrance; and the little wistful queue, standing mutely by, formed the first chain of captives under the yoke of her aspiration.
    They then walked down to the stage-door, and there she left him (having arranged to call for him there afterwards), and decided to go for a little walk before going in.
    But there was too great a restlessness upon her, too full a symphony of glee beating somewhere in the deeps of her spirit, for mere walking, or the thick sights and roarings of Hammersmith to relieve; and she soon came back to the theatre, where she was with the first dozen or so who took their seats in the stalls.
III
    It was a strange and enchanted half-hour which she then spent before the rising of the curtain; and she sat there peacefully reading her programme from cover to cover and back again.
    Until at last the house was full, and the conductor bobbed up, like the apex and unifying spirit of the will of the house, and the overture commenced.
    And the footlights blazed forth, like opening flowers of light; and there ensued a few minutes of elevated pulsating expectancy, of delicious irretrievability, in which every one tried to cough their last coughs, and make their final adjustments.
    Then the house-lights succumbed: a murmurous darkness descended: the overture died down: a quaint, prolonged pause intervened, as though some hitch had taken place: and then the curtain rumbled, slowly and with a sort of unsteady steadiness, upwards. Not a soul spoke; and the tense old gods of make-believe sat vigilant in the breathless house.
    As for Jackie, she sat there alone, with an odd foretaste of stage-fright on behalf of her friend, and watching every movement on the stage as though her existence hung upon it. Even after the first few minutes she was responding with her whole spirit and intelligence to the Satanic melodrama; but when at last Dick Dudgeon appeared, the devil’s advocate himself, the deliverer, the champion of the oppressed, the mocker of debased godliness, the hero and protagonist of courage and righteousness — and when Dick Dudgeon was observed, for all his make-up, to be none other than Richard