"Dear Mr. Evan Evans,--I think that 'A Good Father' is excellent, but
on the whole it does not strike me as being in your best style--which
is capital. If I may be permitted to make an unofficial observation,
you will, I think, pardon the expression of an old man's regret that a
writer with a real sense of humour, like yourself, should subordinate
it to what strikes one as an alien melancholy. If you would only
write as cheerfully as you did some time back, I should be spared the
disappointment of returning your MS., which I shall never do without
peculiar and personal regrets.
"Yours very truly,
"WOLFF MASON."
The good editor breathed more freely when he had got this letter off
his mind, and had addressed it to Evan Evans, Esq., 17, Cardigan
Mansions, Kensington, W., and closed the envelope with his own hand
and tongue. It was his last act at the office that day. As he tossed
the letter into one basket, and the rejected manuscript into another,
the clock on the chimney-piece struck the half-hour after four. And
at half-past four in the afternoon, summer and winter, seed-time and
harvest, with the annual exception of a hateful holiday at some such
place as Saltburn, the editor of the _Mayfair Magazine_ returned to his
club to play whist for an hour and a half precisely, with three kindred
spirits as methodical and as enthusiastic as himself.
But this was the exceptional day which proved every rule of Wolff
Mason's most ruly life by causing him to break each of them in turn.
He played his cards towards evening as amateurishly as he had chosen
his phrases in the forenoon. Now what is about to be written down may
never be believed. But at five-thirty-three, by the card-room clock,
Wolff Mason, who was more eminent among the few as a whist-player than
as a writer of novels, put the last trump on his partner's thirteenth
card. One has it on unimpeachable authority. A few minutes later the
rubber came to an end, and, instead of playing out time, as the custom
was with this sporting quartette, the novelist complained of a slight
faintness (which explained everything) and left the club twenty
minutes before six for the first time for many years.
One of the other three saw him into his hansom. He said that the air
entirely revived him. It might have done so, if there had ever been
anything the matter with him. He ailed nothing, however, beyond extreme
and cumulative mortification; and the four winds of heaven, chasing
each other round his temples as he drove westward, could not have blown
that cobweb out of his respected head.
He could no longer feel surprised at anything that he might do, or
say, or think. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the park he managed
to think upon Evan Evans's latest story, now on its way back to that
uneven contributor, and it seemed only natural that the shrewdest,
most experienced magazine-editor in London should question the wisdom
of his late decision in a way that would have made him laugh on any
other occasion. He did not laugh now. The optimist of letters was in an
incredibly pessimistic mood, in which the story he had refused seemed
to him an ideal one for the magazine. He thought of his valued and
most promising contributor, Evan Evans, of the manuscript now on its
way back to him, of the possible effect of the rejection of so good a
story upon a sensitive young man with a knowledge of other markets.
Then he thought of this contributor's address, which was quite close to
his own, and of the twenty minutes which he had in hand owing to his
premature departure from the club. A word on the spur to the cab-man,
a sharp turn to the left, some easy driving along a quiet street,
and the hansom pulled up before the respectable portals of Cardigan
Mansions, Nos. 11-22, whereof the stout attendant in uniform came
forward and threw back the panels.
In another minute Wolff Mason was pressing the electric bell outside
No. 17 on the second floor, and reflecting, with a qualm, that he was
about to intrude upon a rejected contributor whom he had never seen--a
truly startling reversal of a far too common editorial experience of
his own. An elderly servant opened the door.
"Is Mr. Evans at home?"
"Mr. Hevans, sir?"
The servant looked as vacant as a woman need.
"Mr. Evan Evans," said the editor, distinctly, and with a smile as it
struck him that there was no occasion in the world for him to leave
his name. But a light had broken over the crass face of the elderly
door-opener.
"Oh, I know, sir! He _is_ in. Will you step this way?"
There was no drawing back now. Mr. Mason stepped boldly across the
threshold, and the door closed behind him. In the very narrow passage
the servant squeezed by him, and paused with her fingers on the handle
of a door upon the right-hand side.
"What name shall I say, sir?"
"Mr. Wolff Mason."
A moment later the novelist-editor found himself standing in a more
charming study than he himself owned to that day. It was all books and
pictures, and weapons and pretty curtains, and comfortable chairs and
handy tables. A good fire was burning, and on the right of it was a
desk so placed that the writer looked out into the room as he sat at
his work. The writer was sitting there now. He was a very young man,
with a pipe in his mouth and a pen in his hand, and as he leant forward
with the utmost eagerness, and the light of his writing-lamp fell full
upon his youthful face, Wolff Mason had not the slightest difficulty in
recognising Ida's presumptuous suitor of Saltburn-by-the-Sea.
"How do you do, Mr. Mason?" the young fellow said, coming forward with
his hand frankly outstretched; but the other hesitated before taking it
in his.
"Am I speaking to Mr. Evan Evans?"
"That is the name I--write stories under."
"Exactly. Your other name is not my concern. I don't seek to know it,
Mr. Evans."
The editor was smiling grimly, but his gloved hand was now extended.
Now, however, that of the young man went coolly into his trousers'
pocket as he looked his visitor steadily in the face. They were grey
flannel trousers, with yellow slippers at one end of them and a
Norfolk jacket at the other. The editor's smile had turned to a look of
interest.
"I called to see you about a little story, Mr. Evans."
"You have done me a very great honour, sir. Won't you sit down? Do you
find it warm? Shall I open the window?"
"Not at all, not at all. I won't detain you a moment, and I won't sit
down in one of your chairs, because they look comfortable, and I am
stiff--though you wouldn't think it from my breaking in upon you like
this, would you?"
Having shown very plainly that it was not his intention to recognise
any former acquaintance, and seeing his young host take the cue from
him in a way that struck him as at once manly and gentlemanly, Mr.
Wolff Mason was now behaving in his own most charming fashion, which
was very charming indeed to a young unknown beginner from a favourite
old author whose name had been a household word for a quarter of a
century at least. The beginner felt that if he had gauged the character
of Wolff Mason correctly, when they first met at the sea-side, he would
never have concealed the identity of Jack Overman with Evan Evans. But
all thought of the old man's hardness upon a young one perished in an
overwhelming sense of the great editor's kindness towards his utterly
unknown contributor.
"I'll stand here, if I may, with my back to your fire. I looked in
about the very clever little story you sent me yesterday."
The young author's face brightened till it quivered, but his words were
all unworthy.
"How awfully kind of you!"
"Not at all, my dear sir. I was passing close to you, on my way home,
and I was bothering about your story. I admire your work, but I don't
altogether admire this story. My dear fellow, it ends too sadly
altogether!"
"No other ending was possible," the young man declared. "So I felt, and
one must write as one feels."
"Must one?" said the veteran, smiling blandly into the boyish earnest
face. "Surely all things are possible to him who writes--unless, to be
sure, he takes himself seriously!"
This, however, was not very seriously said, for Wolff Mason had turned
round and was peering at the photographs on and over the mantel-piece.
Suddenly he pushed up his spectacles and thrust his head close to a
framed portrait, with a piece of stamp-paper stuck upon the glass to
hide the face, but with the name in print underneath upon the mount.
"May I ask, young man," inquired Mr. Mason, as he favoured his
contributor with a very comical stare, "why you have my photograph on
the wall, in the first place; and, in the second, why the deuce you
cover up my face?"
"You must ask the man who lives with me. He may come in any moment now."
"Did he do it?"
"I'm ashamed to say he did."
"Upon my word I should like to know why!"
"Well, sir, he bought me your photograph when you were accepting my
stories; and he hid your face because he said----"
"Well, what did he say?"
"He talked such rot, sir!"
"I have no doubt."
"He was ass enough to say you'd certainly live to hide it yourself on
my account! I'm afraid that he unduly admires my stuff. He's a fellow
who is full of sympathy----"
"And not free from humour--by no means free!" cried Mr. Mason,
laughing at the top of his voice (as he had never, never laughed at
Saltburn-by-the-Sea). "But seriously, you are ending your later stories
far too sadly. To come back to your last one--though I'm afraid it's
coming back to you! I rejected it, and then, as I was driving home, I
thought you would perhaps alter it, if I called and asked you before
you sent it elsewhere. Don't you think you could soften your good
father--just at the end?"
"I couldn't," said the young fellow, with a candid stare; but his eyes
fell under the cool, kindly scrutiny of the elderly man, who continued
gazing at the well-shaped head, on which the hair was perhaps a trifle
long and untidy. For once that day Wolff Mason was the equal of the
occasion, and he knew it to his consolation. The occasion, moreover,
was the very one to which he would have desired to rise.
"Why couldn't you, my dear fellow?"
"Because it isn't life."
"Are you so sure that you know life?"
"I know it as I find it," said the young fellow bitterly; and there was
a pause.
"Well, at any rate, you know that I like your stories."
"I am thankful to hear it."
"I want to accept them----"
"You are very kind."
"As many of them as ever you can write, and some day a long novel. I
believe in you, Overton."
"Oh, sir, you are more than kind--to a raw recruit--on the ladder which
you yourself----"
"My good Overton, why on earth didn't you mix those metaphors three
months ago? Not that you're raw at all--unless it's with me!"
Two frail hands were laid on the young man's shoulders. He answered
dryly:
"My other name isn't Overton. It's Over_man_. But I forgot, you said it
wasn't your concern!"
"Ah, well, but the man who is to make the name famous is becoming my
very grave concern. You should have let me know that you were in our
swim, my boy."
"Before I was sure of keeping myself afloat? I thought I had a better
chance as a--bad whist-player!"
"Confound the boy!" cried Wolff Mason, "but you were perfectly right,
though your work is better than your whist."
"Then it was your magazine that I was writing for--you were the one man
in England who could help me on--the whole situation was so liable to
misconstruction!"
"It was--it was. And, now I think of it, you never brought me an
introduction nor asked for an interview, nor wrote me a single
superfluous line!"
"I wanted you to accept my stuff," said the young fellow, smiling.
But behind his spectacles the editor's eyes sparkled for an instant
with something more than human kindness. He had made the grand
discovery of his editorial life. He had discovered the ideal
contributor, and for the moment he could only think of him as a young
man of letters. Now, however, his right hand had found its way into
that of young Overman, as he said with a comic solemnity:
"Look here, Overton, I was five minutes late in leaving the house
this morning; for once in a way I don't mind if I'm five minutes late
in getting back. I think that all you need do is to shave, though
Ida might prefer you in another pair of bags and slippers. You can't
improve upon that Norfolk jacket--but--but you and I must have another
talk about the end of your story."
"AUTHOR! AUTHOR!"
This story has to do with two men and a play, instead of a woman, and
it is none of mine. I had it from an old gentleman I love: only he
ought to have written it himself. This, however, he will never do,
having known intimately in his young days one of the two men concerned.
But I have his leave to repeat the story more or less as he told it--if
I can. And I am going to him for my rebuke--when I dare.
* * * * *
"You want to hear the story of poor old Pharazyn and his play? I'm not
going to tell it you....
"Ah, well! My recollection of the matter dates from one summer's
night at my old rooms in the Adelphi, when he spoilt my night's work
by coming in flushed with an idea of his own. I remember banging the
drawer into which I threw my papers to lock them away for the night;
but in a few minutes I had forgotten my unfinished article, and was
glad that Pharazyn had come. We were young writers, both of us; and,
let me tell you, my good fellow, young writing wasn't in those days
what it is now. I am thinking less of merit than of high prices, and
less of high prices than of cheap notoriety. Neither of us had ever
had our names before the public--not even in the bill of an unread and
unreadable magazine. No one cared about names in my day, save for the
half-dozen great ones that were then among us; so Pharazyn's and mine
never got into the newspapers, though some of them used our stuff.
"In a manner we were rivals, for we were writing the same sort of
thing for the same sort of publications, and that was how we had come
together; but never was rivalry friendlier, or mutually more helpful.
Our parts were strangely complementary: if I could understand for the
life of me the secret of collaboration, I should say that I might have
collaborated with Pharazyn almost ideally. I had the better of him in
point of education, and would have turned single sentences against
him for all he was worth; and I don't mind saying so, for there my
superiority ended. When he had a story to tell he told it with a swing
and impetus which I coveted him, as well I might to this day; and if
he was oftener without anything to write about, his ideas would pay
twenty shillings in the pound, in strength and originality, where mine
made some contemptible composition in pence. That is why I have been a
failure at fiction--oh, yes, I have! That is why Pharazyn would have
succeeded, if only he had stuck to plain ordinary narrative prose.
"The idea he was unable to keep within his own breast, on the evening
of which I am telling you, was as new, and simple, and dramatic as
any that ever intoxicated the soul of story-teller or made a brother
author green with envy. I can see him now, as I watched him that night,
flinging to and fro with his quick, nervous stride, while he sketched
the new story--bit by bit, and often the wrong bit foremost; but all
with his own flashing vividness, which makes me so sorry--so sorry
whenever I think of it. At moments he would stand still before the
chair on which I sat intent, and beat one hand upon the other, and look
down at me with a grand, wondering smile, as though he himself could
hardly believe what the gods had put into his head, or that the gift
was real gold, it glittered so at first sight. On that point I could
reassure him. My open jealousy made me admire soberly. But when he told
me, quite suddenly, as though on an afterthought, that he meant to make
a play of it and not a story, I had the solid satisfaction at that
moment of calling him a fool.
"The ordinary author of my day, you see, had a certain timorous respect
for the technique of the stage. It never occurred to us to make
light of those literary conventions which it was not our business to
understand. We were behind you fellows in every way. But Pharazyn was a
sort of forerunner: he said that any intelligent person could write a
play, if he wanted to, and provided he could write at all. He said his
story was a born play; and it was, in a way; but I told him I doubted
whether he could train it up with his own hand into a good acting one.
I knew I was right. He had neither the experience nor the innate
constructive faculty, one or other of which is absolutely necessary for
the writing of possible plays. I implored him to turn the thing into
a good dramatic novel, and so make his mark at one blow. But no; the
wilful fit was on him, and one had to let it run its course. Already he
could see and hear his audience laughing and crying, so he said, and
no doubt he had further visions of his weekly cheque. Anyhow, we sat
up all night over it, arguing, smoking, and drinking whisky until my
windows overlooking the river caught the rising sun at an angle. Then I
gave in, for poor old Pharazyn was more obstinate than ever, though he
thanked me with the greatest good temper for my well-meant advice.
"'And look here, my boy,' says he, as he puts on his hat, 'you shan't
hear another word about this till the play's written; and you are
to ask no questions. Is that a bargain? Very well, then. When I've
finished it--down to the very last touches--_you_ shall come and sit up
all night with _me_, and I'll read you every word. And by George, old
chap, if they give me a call the first night, and want a speech--and I
see you sitting in your stall, like a blessed old fool as you are--by
George, sir, I'll hold up you and your judgment to the ridicule of the
house, so help me Himmel!'
"Well, I am coming to that first night presently. Meanwhile, for the
next six months I saw very little of Pharazyn, and less still in the
new year. He seldom came to my rooms now; when he did I could never
get him to stay and sit up with me; and once when I climbed up to his
garret (it was literally that) he would not answer me, though I could
smell his pipe through the key-hole in which he'd turned the key. Yet
he was perfectly friendly whenever we did meet. He said he was working
very hard, and indeed I could imagine it; his personal appearance,
never his strong point, being even untidier, not to say seedier, than
of old. He continued to send me odd magazines in which his stuff
happened to appear, or, occasionally a proof for one's opinion and
suggestions; we had done this to each other all along; but either I did
not think about it, or somehow he led me to suppose that his things
were more or less hot from the pen, whereas many of mine had been
written a twelve-month before one saw them in type. One way or another
I gathered that he was at work in our common groove, and had shelved,
for the present at all events, his proposed play, about which you will
remember I had undertaken to ask no questions.
"I was quite mistaken. One night in the following March he came to me
with a haggard face, a beaming eye, and a stout, clean manuscript,
which he brought down with a thud on my desk. It was the play he had
sketched out to me eight or nine months before. I was horrified to hear
he had been at work upon it alone from that night to this. He actually
boasted that he hadn't written another line in all that time, only
each line of his play some ten times over.
"I recollect looking curiously at his shabby clothes, and then
reminding him that it was at his place, not mine, I was to have heard
him read the play: and how he confessed that he had no chair for me
there--that his room was practically dismantled--that he had sacrificed
everything to the play and would do so again. I was extremely angry. I
could have helped him so easily, independent as I was of the calling I
loved to follow. But there was about him always an accursed unnecessary
independence, which has since struck me--and I think I may say so after
all these years--as the mark of a rather humble, deadly honest origin.
"He read me the play, and I cried over the third act, and so did he.
I thought then, and still think, that there was genius in that third
act--it took you off your feet. And to me, certainly, it seemed as if
the piece must act as well as it read, though indeed, as I took care to
say and to repeat, my opinion was well-nigh valueless on that point.
I only knew that I could see the thing playing itself, as I walked
about the room (for this time I was the person who was too excited
to sit still), and that was enough to make one sanguine. I became as
enthusiastic about it as though the work were mine (which it never,
never would or could have been), yet I was unable to suggest a single
improvement, or to have so much as a finger-tip in the pie. Nor could
I afterwards account for its invariable reception at the hands of
managers, whose ways were then unknown to me. That night we talked only
of one kind of reception. We were still talking when once more the sun
came slanting up the river to my windows; you could hardly see them for
tobacco-smoke, and this time we had emptied a bottle to the success of
Pharazyn's piece.
"Oh, those nights--those nights once in a way! God forgive me, but I'd
sacrifice many things to be young again and feel clever, and to know
the man who would sit up all night with me to rule the world over a
bottle of honest grog. In the light of after events I ought perhaps
to be ashamed to recall such a night with that particular companion.
But it is ridiculous, in my opinion, to fit some sort of consequence
to every little solitary act; and I shall never admit that poor
Pharazyn's ultimate failing was in any appreciable degree founded or
promoted by those our youthful full-souled orgies. I know very well
that afterwards, when his life was spent in waylaying those aforesaid
managers, in cold passages, on stage doorsteps, or in desperation
under the public portico on the street; and when a hundred snubs and
subterfuges would culminate in the return of his manuscript, ragged
but unread; I know, and I knew then, that the wreck who would dodge me
in Fleet Street, or cut me in the Strand, had taken to his glass more
seriously and more steadily than a man should. But I am not sure that
it matters much--_much_, you understand me--when that man's heart is
broken.
* * * * *
"The last words I was ever to exchange with my poor old friend ring in
my head to this day, whenever I think of him; and I can repeat them
every one. It was years after our intimacy had ceased, and when I only
knew that he had degenerated into a Fleet Street loafer of the most
dilapidated type, that I caught sight of him one day outside a theatre.
It was the theatre which was for some years a gold-mine to one Morton
Morrison, of whom you may never have heard; but he was a public pet in
his day, and his day was just then at its high noon. Well, there stood
Pharazyn, with his hands in his pockets and a cutty-pipe sticking out
between his ragged beard and moustache, and his shoulders against the
pit door, so that for once he could not escape me. But he wouldn't
take a hand out of his pocket to shake mine; and when I asked him
how he was, without thinking, he laughed in my face, and it made me
feel cruel. He was dreadfully emaciated and almost in rags. And as I
wondered what I ought to do, and what to say next, he gave a cough, and
spat upon the pavement, and I could see the blood.
"I don't know what you would have done for him, but for all I knew what
had brought him to this, I could think of nothing but a drink. It was
mid-winter, and I tell you the man was in rags. I felt that if I could
get him to a bar he might eat something, too, and that I should lay
such a hold of him this time as I need never again let go. Judge of my
surprise when he flatly refused to come with me even for a drink.
"'Can't you see?' he said in his hollow voice. 'There'll be a crowd
here directly, and I want the best seat in the pit--the best in the
house. I've been going dry for it these two days, and I'm going dry
till I've seen the piece. No, I've been here an hour already, and I'm
still the first; but I mightn't be when I came back, and I'm not going
to risk it, thanks all the same.'
"By this I had remembered that Morton Morrison was to re-open that
night with a new piece. Indeed, I ought not to have forgotten that,
seeing that I had my order about me somewhere, and it meant a column
from my pen between twelve and one in the morning. But this sudden
sorry meeting had put all other thoughts out of my head.
"'My dear fellow,' I said, with a sort of laugh, 'are you a
first-nighter, too?'
"'Only at this theatre.'
"He looked me queerly in the face.
"'You admire Morrison as much as all that?'
"'I love him!'
"I suppose my eyes thawed him, though God knows how hard I was trying
not to hurt him with pitying looks. At all events he began to explain
himself of his own accord, in one bitter, swift, impetuous outburst.
"'Look here,' he said, with his hoarse voice lowered: 'I hoped never
to see your face again. I hoped you'd never see mine. But now you are
here, don't go this minute, and I'll tell you why I think so much of
Morton Morrison. I don't know him, mind you--he doesn't know me from
Adam--but once long ago I had something to do with him. And God bless
him, but damn every other manager in London, for he was the only one of
the lot to give me a civil hearing and a kind word!'
"I knew what he was talking about, and he knew that I knew, for we had
understood one another in the old days.
"'I took it to him last of all,' he went on, wiping his damp lips with
his hand. 'When I began hawking it about he was an unknown man; when
his turn came he was here. He let me read it to him. Then he asked me
to leave it with him for a week; and when I went back to him, he said
what they'd all said--that it would never act. But Morton Morrison said
it nicely. And when he saw how it cut me up into little bits, he got
me to tell him all about everything; and then he persuaded me to burn
the play, instead of ruining my life for it; and I burnt it in his
dressing-room fire, but the ruin was too far gone to mend. I wrote that
thing with my heart's blood--old man, you know I did! And none of them
would think of it--my God! But Morrison was good about it--he's a good
soul--and that's why you'll see me at every first night of his until
the drink does me.'
"I had not followed him quite to the end. One thing had amazed me too
much.
"'You burnt your play,' I could only murmur, 'when it would have turned
into such a novel! Surely you have some draft of it still?'
"'I burnt the lot when I got home,' says Pharazyn, 'and before long I
shall join 'em and burn too.'
"I had nothing to answer to that, and was, besides, tenacious of my
point. 'I don't think much of the kindness that makes one man persuade
another to burn his work and throw up the sponge,' I said, with a good
deal of indignation, for I did feel wroth with that fellow Morrison--a
bread-and-butter drawing-room actor whose very vogue used to irritate
me.
"'Then what do you think of this?' asked Pharazyn, as he dipped a hand
within his shabby coat, and cautiously unclenched it under my nose.
"'It's a five-pound note.'
"'I know; but wasn't _that_ kind, then?'
"'So Morrison gave you this!' I said.
"Two or three persons had stopped to join us at the pit door, and
Pharazyn hastily put the note back in his pocket. As he did so, his
dreadfully shabby condition gave my heart a fresh cut.
"'Are you never going to spend that?' I asked in a whisper; and in a
whisper he answered, 'Never. It's all my play has brought me--all. It
was given me as a charity, but I took it as my earnings--my earnings
for all the work and waiting, and flesh and blood and self-respect,
that one thing cost me. Spend it? Not I. It will bury me as decently as
I deserve.'
"We could converse no more. And the presence of other people prevented
me from giving him my overcoat, though I spoke of it into his ear,
begging and imploring him to come away and take it while there was
still time for him to slip back and get a seat in the front row. But
he would not hear of it, and the way he refused reminded me of his old
stubborn independence; all I got was a promise that he would have a
bite with me after the performance. And so I left him in the frosty
dusk, ill-clad and unkempt, with the new-lit lamp over the pit door
shining down upon the haggard mask that had once been the eager,
memorable face of my cleverest friend.
"I saw him next the moment I entered the theatre that evening, and I
nodded my head to him, which he rebuked with the slightest shake of his
own. So I looked no more at him before the play began, comprehending
that he desired me not to do so. The temptation, however, was too
strong to go on resisting, for while Pharazyn was in the very centre
of the front row in the pit, I was at one end of the last row of the
stalls; and I was very anxious about him, wanting to make sure that he
was there and not going to escape me again, and nervous at having him
out of my sight for five minutes together.
"Thus I know more about the gradual change which came over Pharazyn's
poor face, as scene followed scene, than of the developments and merits
of those scenes themselves. My mind was in any case running more on my
lost friend than on the piece; but it was not till near the end of the
first act that the growing oddity of his look first struck me.
"His eyebrows were raised; it was a look of incredulity chiefly; yet I
could see nothing improbable in the play as far as it had gone. I was
but lightly attending, for my own purposes, as you youngsters skim your
betters for review; but thus far the situation struck me as at once
feasible and promising. Also it all seemed somehow familiar to me; I
could not say just where or why, for watching Pharazyn's face. And it
was his face that told me at last, in the second act. By God, it was
his own play!
"It was Pharazyn's play, superficially altered all through, nowhere
substantially; but the only play for me, when I knew that, was being
acted in the front row of the pit, and not on the stage, to which I had
turned the side of my head. I watched my old friend's face writhe and
work until it stiffened in a savage calm; and watching, I thought of
the 'first night' he had pictured jovially in the old days, when the
bare idea of the piece was bursting his soul; and thinking, I wondered
whether it could add a drop to his bitterness to remember that too.
"Yet, through all my thoughts, I was listening, intently enough now.
And in the third act I heard the very words my friend had written: they
had not meddled with his lines in the great scene which had moved us
both to tears long ago in my rooms. And this I swear to, whether you
believe it or no--that at the crisis of that scene, which was just
as Pharazyn made it, the quiet ferocity transfiguring his face died
suddenly away, and I saw it shining as once before with the sweetest
tears our eyes can shed--the tears of an artist over his own work.
"And when the act was over he sat with his head on his hand for some
minutes, drinking in the applause, as I well knew; then he left his
seat and squeezed out on my side of the house, and I made sure he was
coming to speak to me over the barrier, and got up to speak to him; but
he would not see me, but stood against the barrier with a face as white
and set as chiselled marble.
"What followed on the first fall of the curtain I can tell you as
quickly as it happened. Louder call for an author I never heard, and
I turned my eyes to the stage in my intense curiosity to see who
would come forward; for the piece had been brought out anonymously;
and I divined that Morrison himself was about to father it. And so he
did: but as the lie passed his lips, and in the interval before the
applause--the breathless interval between flash and peal--the lie was
given him in a roar of fury from my left: there was a thud at my side,
and Pharazyn was over the barrier and bolting down the gangway towards
the stage. I think he was near making a leap for the footlights and
confronting Morrison on his own boards; but the orchestra came between,
and the fiddlers rose in their places. Then he turned wildly to us
pressmen, and I will say he had our ear, if not that of the whole house
besides, for the few words he was allowed to utter.
"'Gentlemen!' he cried at the top of his voice--'Gentlemen, I'm one
of you! I'm a writing man like yourselves, and I wrote this play
that you've seen. That man never wrote it at all--I wrote it myself!
That man has only altered it. I read it to him two years ago--two
years ago, gentlemen! He kept it for a week, and then got me to burn
it as rubbish--when he had made a copy of it! And he gave me this,
gentlemen--this--this--that I give him back!'
"It was a matter of only a few seconds, but not till my own last hour
shall I forget Morrison's painted face on the stage, or that sweating
white one beneath the boxes; or the fluttering from Pharazyn's poor
fingers of the five-pound note he had treasured for two years; or the
hush all over the house until the first hand was laid upon his dirty
collar.
"'What!' he screamed, 'do none of you believe me? Will none of you
stand by me--isn't there a man--not one man----'
"And they threw him out with my name on his lips. And I followed, and
floored a brute who was handling him roughly. And nothing happened to
me--because of what happened to Pharazyn."
* * * * *
The dear old boy sat silent, his grey head on his hand. Presently he
went on, more to himself than to me: "What could I do? What proof had
I? He had burnt them every one. And as long as the public would stand
him, Morrison kept his good name at least. And that play was his great
success!"