Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/99

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Episodes before Thirty

we believed; possibly she really would exterminate the other tenants. We stayed on.

Of the cricket match on Staten Island, beyond the pretty ground with its big trees, and that we got a good lunch without paying for it, no memory remains. What stands out vividly is the tall figure of Arthur Glyn Boyde, a fast bowler and a good bat, and one of the most entertaining and sympathetic companions I had ever met. His clothes were shabby, but his graceful manners, his voice, his smile, everything about him, in fact, betrayed the English gentleman. He was about thirty years of age, of the most frank and engaging appearance, with kindly, honest blue eyes, in one of which he wore an eyeglass. I remember the little fact that he, Kay and myself were measured for a bet after the match, and that he, like Kay, was six feet two inches, being one inch shorter than myself.

I took to him at once, and he to me. His real name was a distinguished one which he shared, it turned out, with some cousins of my own. We were, therefore, related. The bond was deepened. Times had gone hard with him, it seemed, but at the moment he was on the stage, being understudy to Morton Selton as Merivale in "Captain Lettarblair," which E. H. Sothern's company was then playing. In "The Disreputable Mr. Reagen," by, I think, Richard Harding Davis he had also played the rôle of the detective. He was waiting, however, for a much better post, as huntsman to the Rockaway Hunt, a Long Island fashionable club, and this post, oddly enough, was in the gift, he told me, of Davis. It had been practically promised to him, he might hear any day.... The story of his many jobs and wanderings interested us, and his theatre work promised to be helpful in many ways to what was called my "room-mate." Boyde's experience of New York generally was invaluable to us both, and the fact that he had nowhere to sleep that night (having been turned out by his landlady) gave us the opportunity to invite him to our humble quarters. We mentioned the other tenants, but he said that made no difference,

he would sleep on the sofa. He dined with us at

86