A NOVELIST IN A BOX
Perhaps it was just as well that the curtain was falling on the ballet
when Henry and Geraldine took possession of their stalls in the superb
Iberian auditorium of the Alhambra Theatre. The glimpse which Henry had
of the _prima ballerina assoluta_ in her final pose and her costume, and
of the hundred minor choregraphic artists, caused him to turn
involuntarily to Geraldine to see whether she was not shocked. She,
however, seemed to be keeping her nerve fairly well; so he smothered up
his consternation in a series of short, dry coughs, and bought a
programme. He said to himself bravely: 'I'm in for it, and I may as well
go through with it.' The next item, while it puzzled, reassured him. The
stage showed a restaurant, with a large screen on one side. A lady
entered, chattered at an incredible rate in Italian, and disappeared
behind the screen, where she knocked a chair over and rang for the
waiter. Then the waiter entered and disappeared behind the screen,
chattering at an incredible rate in Italian. The waiter reappeared and
made his exit, and then a gentleman appeared, and disappeared behind the
screen, chattering at an incredible rate in Italian. Kissing was heard
behind the screen. Instantly the waiter served a dinner, chattering
always behind the screen with his customers at an incredible rate in
Italian. Then another gentleman appeared, and no sooner had he
disappeared behind the screen, chattering at an incredible rate in
Italian, than a policeman appeared, and he too, chattering at an
incredible rate in Italian, disappeared behind the screen. A fearsome
altercation was now developing behind the screen in the tongue of Dante,
and from time to time one or other of the characters--the lady, the
policeman, the first or second gentleman, the waiter--came from cover
into view of the audience, and harangued the rest at an incredible rate
in Italian. Then a disaster happened behind the screen: a table was
upset, to an accompaniment of yells; and the curtain fell rapidly, amid
loud applause, to rise again with equal rapidity on the spectacle of a
bowing and smiling little man in ordinary evening dress.
This singular and enigmatic drama disconcerted Henry.
'What is it?' he whispered.
'Pauletti,' said Geraldine, rather surprised at the question.
He gathered from her tone that Pauletti was a personage of some
importance, and, consulting the programme, read: 'Pauletti, the
world-renowned quick-change artiste.' Then he figuratively kicked
himself, like a man kicks himself figuratively in bed when he wakes up
in the middle of the night and sees the point of what has hitherto
appeared to be rather less than a joke.
'He's very good,' said Henry, as the excellence of Pauletti became more
and more clear to him.
'He gets a hundred a week,' said Geraldine.
When Pauletti had performed two other violent dramas, and dressed and
undressed himself thirty-nine times in twenty minutes, he gave way to
his fellow-countryman Toscato. Toscato began gently with a little
prestidigitation, picking five-pound notes out of the air, and
simplicities of that kind. He then borrowed a handkerchief, produced an
orange out of the handkerchief, a vegetable-marrow out of the orange, a
gibus hat out of the vegetable-marrow, a live sucking-pig out of the
gibus hat, five hundred yards of coloured paper out of the sucking-pig,
a Union-jack twelve feet by ten out of the bunch of paper, and a
wardrobe with real doors and full of ladies' dresses out of the
Union-jack. Lastly, a beautiful young girl stepped forth from the
wardrobe.
'_I never saw anything like it!_' Henry gasped, very truthfully. He had
a momentary fancy that the devil was in this extraordinary defiance of
natural laws.
'Yes,' Geraldine admitted. 'It's not bad, is it?'
As Toscato could speak no English, an Englishman now joined him and
announced that Toscato would proceed to perform his latest and greatest
illusion--namely, the unique vanishing trick--for the first time in
England; also that Toscato extended a cordial invitation to members of
the audience to come up on to the stage and do their acutest to pierce
the mystery.
'Come along,' said a voice in Henry's ear, 'I'm going.' It was Mr.
Doxey's.
'Oh, no, thanks!' Henry replied hastily.
'Nothing to be afraid of,' said Mr. Doxey, shrugging his shoulders with
an air which Henry judged slightly patronizing.
'Oh yes, do go,' Geraldine urged. 'It will be such fun.'
He hated to go, but there was no alternative, and so he went, stumbling
after Mr. Doxey up the step-ladder which had been placed against the
footlights for the ascending of people who prided themselves on being
acute. There were seven such persons on the stage, not counting himself,
but Henry honestly thought that the eyes of the entire audience were
directed upon him alone. The stage seemed very large, and he was cut off
from the audience by a wall of blinding rays, and at first he could only
distinguish vast vague semicircles and a floor of pale, featureless
faces. However, he depended upon Mr. Doxey.
But when the trick-box had been brought on to the stage--it was a sort
of a sentry-box raised on four legs--Henry soon began to recover his
self-possession. He examined that box inside and out until he became
thoroughly convinced that it was without guile. The jury of seven stood
round the erection, and the English assistant stated that a sheet
(produced) would be thrown over Toscato, who would then step into the
box and shut the door. The door would then be closed for ten seconds,
whereupon it would be opened and the beautiful young girl would step out
of the box, while Toscato would magically appear in another part of the
house.
At this point Henry stooped to give a last glance under the box.
Immediately Toscato held him with a fiery eye, as though enraged, and,
going up to him, took eight court cards from Henry's sleeve, a lady's
garter from his waistcoat pocket, and a Bath-bun out of his mouth. The
audience received this professional joke in excellent part, and, indeed,
roared its amusement. Henry blushed, would have given all the money he
had on him--some ninety pounds--to be back in the stalls, and felt a hot
desire to explain to everyone that the cards, the Bath-bun, and
especially the garter, had not really been in his possession at all.
That part of the episode over, the trick ought to have gone forward, but
Toscato's Italian temper was effervescing, and he insisted by signs
that one of the jury should actually get into the box bodily, and so
satisfy the community that the box was a box _et praeterea nilil_. The
English assistant pointed to Henry, and Henry, to save argument,
reluctantly entered the box. Toscato shut the door. Henry was in the
dark, and quite mechanically he extended his hands and felt the sides of
the box. His fingers touched a projection in a corner, and he heard a
clicking sound. Then he was aware of Toscato shaking the door of the
box, frantically and more frantically, and of the noise of distant
multitudinous laughter.
'Don't hold the door,' whispered a voice.
'I'm not doing so,' Henry whispered in reply.
The box trembled.
'I say, old chap, don't hold the door. They want to get on with the
trick.' This time it was Mr. Doxey who addressed him in persuasive
tones.
'Don't I tell you I'm not holding the door, you silly fool!' retorted
Henry, nettled.
The box trembled anew and more dangerously. The distant laughter grew
immense and formidable.
'Carry it off,' said a third voice, 'and get him out in the wings.'
The box underwent an earthquake; it rocked; Henry was thrown with
excessive violence from side to side; the sound of the laughter receded.
Happily, the box had no roof; it was laid with all tenderness on its
flank, and the tenant crawled out of it into the midst of an interested
crowd consisting of Toscato, some stage-managers, several
scene-shifters, and many ballerinas. His natural good-temper reasserted
itself at once, and he received apologies in the spirit in which they
were offered, while Toscato set the box to rights. Henry was returning
to the stage in order to escape from the ballerinas, whose proximity
disturbed and frightened him, but he had scarcely shown his face to the
house before he was, as it were, beaten back by a terrific wave of
jubilant cheers. The great vanishing trick was brilliantly accomplished
without his presence on the boards, and an official guided him through
various passages back to the floor of the house. Nobody seemed to
observe him as he sat down beside Geraldine.
'Of course it was all part of the show, that business,' he heard a man
remark loudly some distance behind him.
He much enjoyed explaining the whole thing to Geraldine. Now that it was
over, he felt rather proud, rather triumphant. He did not know that he
was very excited, but he observed that Geraldine was excited.
'You needn't think you are going to escape from telling me all about
your new book, because you aren't,' said Geraldine prettily.
They were supping at a restaurant of the discreet sort, divided into
many compartments, and situated, with a charming symbolism, at the back
of St. George's, Hanover Square. Geraldine had chosen it. They did not
need food, but they needed their own unadulterated society.
'I'm only too pleased to tell you,' Henry replied. 'You're about the
only person that I would tell. It's like this. You must imagine a youth
growing up to manhood, and wanting to be a great artist. I don't mean a
painter. I mean a--an actor. Yes, a very great actor. Shakspere's
tragedies, you know, and all that.'
She nodded earnestly.
'What's his name?' she inquired.
Henry gazed at her. 'His name's Gerald,' he said, and she flushed.
'Well, at sixteen this youth is considerably over six feet in height,
and still growing. At eighteen his figure has begun to excite remark in
the streets. At nineteen he has a severe attack of scarlet fever, and
while ill he grows still more, in bed, like people do, you know. And at
twenty he is six feet eight inches high.'
'A giant, in fact.'
'Just so. But he doesn't want to be a giant He wants to be an actor, a
great actor. Nobody will look at him, except to stare. The idea of his
going on the stage is laughed at. He scarcely dare walk out in the
streets because children follow him. But he _is_ a great actor, all the
same, in spirit. He's got the artistic temperament, and he can't be a
clerk. He can only be one thing, and that one thing is made impossible
by his height. He falls in love with a girl. She rather likes him, but
naturally the idea of marrying a giant doesn't appeal to her. So that's
off, too. And he's got no resources, and he's gradually starving in a
garret. See the tragedy?'
She nodded, reflective, sympathetically silent.
Henry continued: 'Well, he's starving. He doesn't know what to do. He
isn't quite tall enough to be a show-giant--they have to be over seven
feet--otherwise he might at any rate try the music-hall stage. Then the
manager of a West End restaurant catches sight of him one day, and
offers him a place as doorkeeper at a pound a week and tips. He refuses
it indignantly. But after a week or two more of hunger he changes his
mind and accepts. And this man who has the soul and the brains of a
great artist is reduced to taking sixpences for opening cab-doors.'
'Does it end there?'
'No. It's a sad story, I'm afraid. He dies one night in the snow outside
the restaurant, while the rich noodles are gorging themselves inside to
the music of a band. Consumption.'
'It's the most original story I ever heard in all my life,' said
Geraldine enthusiastically.
'Do you think so?'
'I do, honestly. What are you going to call it--if I may ask?'
'Call it?' He hesitated a second. '_A Question of Cubits_,' he said.
'You are simply wonderful at titles,' she observed. 'Thank you. Thank
you so much.'
'No one else knows,' he finished.
When he had seen her safely to Chenies Street, and was travelling to
Dawes Road in a cab, he felt perfectly happy. The story had come to him
almost by itself. It had been coming all the evening, even while he was
in the box, even while he was lost in admiration of Geraldine. It had
cost him nothing. He knew he could write it with perfect ease. And
Geraldine admired it! It was the most original story she had ever heard
in all her life! He himself thought it extremely original, too. He saw
now how foolish and premature had been his fears for the future. Of
course he had studied human nature. Of course he had been through the
mill, and practised style. Had he not won the prize for composition at
the age of twelve? And was there not the tangible evidence of his essays
for the Polytechnic, not to mention his continual work for Sir George?
He crept upstairs to his bedroom joyous, jaunty, exultant.
'Is that you, Henry?' It was Aunt Annie's inquiry.
'Yes,' he answered, safely within his room.
'How late you are! It's half-past twelve and more.'
'I got lost,' he explained to her.
But he could not explain to himself what instinct had forced him to
conceal from his adoring relatives the fact that he had bought a suit of
dress-clothes, put them on, and sallied forth in them to spend an
evening with a young lady.
Just as he was dropping off to sleep and beauteous visions, he sprang up
with a start, and, lighting a candle, descended to the dining-room.
There he stood on a chair, reached for the blue jar on the bookcase,
extracted the two eggs, and carried them upstairs. He opened his window
and threw the eggs into the middle of Dawes Road, but several houses
lower down; they fell with a soft _plup_, and scattered.
Thus ended the miraculous evening.
The next day he was prostrate with one of his very worst dyspeptic
visitations. The Knight pew at Munster Park Chapel was empty at both
services, and Henry learnt from loving lips that he must expect to be
ill if he persisted in working so hard. He meekly acknowledged the
justice of the rebuke.
On Monday morning at half-past eight, before he had appeared at
breakfast, there came a telegram, which Aunt Annie opened. It had been
despatched from Paris on the previous evening, and it ran:
'_Congratulations on the box trick. Worth half a dozen books with the
dear simple public A sincere admirer._' This telegram puzzled everybody,
including Henry; though perhaps it puzzled Henry a little less than the
ladies. When Aunt Annie suggested that it had been wrongly addressed, he
agreed that no other explanation was possible, and Sarah took it back to
the post-office.
He departed to business. At all the newspaper-shops, at all the
bookstalls, he saw the placards of morning newspapers with lines
conceived thus:
AMUSING INCIDENT AT THE ALHAMBRA.
A NOVELIST'S ADVENTURE.
VANISHING AUTHOR AT A MUSIC-HALL.
A NOVELIST IN A BOX.