The captain did call at Fishguard, in pouring
rain, and men came aboard selling Sunday newspapers that were full
of Isabel's arrest on the steamer, and of the nearing triumph of her
arrival in London before midnight. And newspaper correspondents also
came aboard, and all the way on the tender, and in the sheds, and
in the train, Edward Henry and Isabel Joy were subjected to the
journalistic experiments of hardy interviewers. The train arrived at
Paddington at 9 P.M. Isabel had won by three hours. The station was
a surging throng of open-mouthed curiosities. Edward Henry would not
lose sight of his priceless charge, but he sent Harrier to despatch a
telegram to Nellie, whose wifely interest in his movements he had till
then either forgotten or ignored.
And even now his mind was not free. He saw in front of him still
twenty-four hours of anguish.
VII
The next night, just before the curtain went up, he stood on the stage
of the Regent Theatre, and it is a fact that he was trembling--not
with fear but with simple excitement.
Through what a day he had passed! There had been the rehearsal in the
morning; it had gone off very well, save that Rose Euclid had behaved
impossibly, and that the Cunningham girl, the hit of the piece but
ousted from her part, had filled the place with just lamentations and
recriminations.
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