I went up to town bearing the Callan article, and a letter of warm
commendation from Callan to Fox. I had been very docile; had accepted
emendations; had lavished praise, had been unctuous and yet had
contrived to retain the dignified savour of the editorial "we." Callan
himself asked no more.
I was directed to seek Fox out--to find him immediately. The matter was
growing urgent. Fox was not at the office--the brand new office that I
afterward saw pass through the succeeding stages of business-like
comfort and dusty neglect. I was directed to ask for him at the stage
door of the Buckingham.
I waited in the doorkeeper's glass box at the Buckingham. I was eyed by
the suspicious commissionaire with the contempt reserved for resting
actors. Resting actors are hungry suppliants as a rule. Call-boys sought
Mr. Fox. "Anybody seen Mr. Fox? He's gone to lunch."
"Mr. Fox is out," said the commissionaire.
I explained that the matter was urgent. More call-boys disappeared
through the folding doors. Unenticing personages passed the glass box,
casting hostile glances askance at me on my high stool. A message came
back.
"If it's Mr. Etchingham Granger, he's to follow Mr. Fox to Mrs. Hartly's
at once."
I followed Mr. Fox to Mrs. Hartly's--to a little flat in a neighbourhood
that I need not specify. The eminent journalist was lunching with the
eminent actress. A husband was in attendance--a nonentity with a heavy
yellow moustache, who hummed and hawed over his watch.
Mr. Fox was full-faced, with a persuasive, peremptory manner. Mrs.
Hartly was--well, she was just Mrs. Hartly. You remember how we all fell
in love with her figure and her manner, and her voice, and the way she
used her hands. She broke her bread with those very hands; spoke to her
husband with that very voice, and rose from table with that same
graceful management of her limp skirts. She made eyes at me; at her
husband; at little Fox, at the man who handed the asparagus--great
round grey eyes. She was just the same. The curtain never fell on that
eternal dress rehearsal. I don't wonder the husband was forever looking
at his watch.
Mr. Fox was a friend of the house. He dispensed with ceremony, read my
manuscript over his Roquefort, and seemed to find it add to the savour.
"You are going to do me for Mr. Fox," Mrs. Hartly said, turning her
large grey eyes upon me. They were very soft. They seemed to send out
waves of intense sympatheticism. I thought of those others that had shot
out a razor-edged ray.
"Why," I answered, "there was some talk of my doing somebody for the
_Hour_."
Fox put my manuscript under his empty tumbler.
"Yes," he said, sharply. "He will do, I think. H'm, yes. Why, yes."
"You're a friend of Mr. Callan's, aren't you?" Mrs. Hartly asked, "What
a dear, nice man he is! You should see him at rehearsals. You know I'm
doing his 'Boldero'; he's given me a perfectly lovely part--perfectly
lovely. And the trouble he takes. He tries every chair on the stage."
"H'm; yes," Fox interjected, "he likes to have his own way."
"We _all_ like that," the great actress said. She was quoting from her
first great part. I thought--but, perhaps, I was mistaken--that all her
utterances were quotations from her first great part. Her husband looked
at his watch.
"Are you coming to this confounded flower show?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, turning her mysterious eyes upon him, "I'll go and get
ready."
She disappeared through an inner door. I expected to hear the
pistol-shot and the heavy fall from the next room. I forgot that it was
not the end of the fifth act.
Fox put my manuscript into his breast pocket.
"Come along, Granger," he said to me, "I want to speak to you. You'll
have plenty of opportunity for seeing Mrs. Hartly, I expect. She's tenth
on your list. Good-day, Hartly."
Hartly's hand was wavering between his moustache and his watch pocket.
"Good-day," he said sulkily.
"You must come and see me again, Mr. Granger," Mrs. Hartly said from
the door. "Come to the Buckingham and see how we're getting on with your
friend's play. We must have a good long talk if you're to get my local
colour, as Mr. Fox calls it."
"To gild refined gold; to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet--"