(She might get the better of Seven Sachs, but not of him, Edward Henry

Machin from the Five Towns!)

"Marrier," said he suddenly, with a bluff humorous downrightness, "you

know you're in a very awkward position here, and you know you've got to

see Alloyd for me before six o'clock. Be off with you. I will be

responsible for Miss April."

("I'll show these Londoners!" he said to himself. "It's simple enough

when you once get into it.")

And he did in fact succeed in dismissing Mr. Marrier, after the latter

had talked Azure business with Miss April for a couple of minutes.

"I must go, too," said Elsie, imperturbable, impenetrable.

"One moment," he entreated, and masterfully signalled Marrier to depart.

After all, he was paying the fellow three pounds a week.

She watched Marrier thread his way out. Already she had put on her

gloves.

"I must go," she repeated, her rich red lips then closed definitely.

"Have you a motor here?" Edward Henry asked.

"No."

"Then, if I may, I'll see you home."

"You may," she said, gazing full at him.

Whereby he was somewhat startled and put out of countenance.

V.

"Are we friends?" he asked roguishly.

"I hope so," she said, with no diminution of her inscrutability.

They were in a taxicab, rolling along the Embankment towards the

Buckingham Palace Hotel, where she said she lived. He was happy. "Why

am I happy?" he thought. "What is there in her that makes me happy?"

He did not know. But he knew that he had never been in a taxicab, or

anywhere else, with any woman half so elegant. Her elegance flattered

him enormously. Here he was, a provincial man of business, ruffling it

with the best of them! ... And she was young in her worldly maturity.

Was she twenty-seven? She could not be more. She looked straight in

front of her, faintly smiling.... Yes, he was fully aware that he was a

married man. He had a distinct vision of the angelic Nellie, of the

three children, and of his mother. But it seemed to him that his own

case differed in some very subtle and yet effective manner from the

similar case of any other married man. And he lived, unharassed by

apprehensions, in the lively joy of the moment.

"But," she said, "I hope you won't come to see me act."

"Why?"

"Because I should prefer you not to. You would not be sympathetic to

me."

"Oh, yes, I should."

"I shouldn't feel it so." And then with a swift disarrangement of all

the folds of her skirt she turned and faced him. "Mr. Machin, do you

know why I've let you come with me?"

"Because you're a good-natured woman," he said.

She grew even graver, shaking her head.

"No! I simply wanted to tell you that you've ruined Rose, my cousin."

"Miss Euclid? Me ruined Miss Euclid?"

"Yes. You robbed her of her theatre--her one chance."

He blushed. "Excuse me," he said, "I did no such thing. I simply

bought her option from her. She was absolutely free to keep the option

or let it go."

"The fact remains," said Elsie April, with humid eyes, "the fact remains

that she'd set her heart on having that theatre, and you failed her at

the last instant. And she has nothing, and you've got the theatre

entirely in your own hands. I'm not so silly as to suppose that you

can't defend yourself legally. But let me tell you that Rose went to

the United States heart-broken, and she's playing to empty houses

there--empty houses! Whereas she might have been here in London,

interested in her theatre, and preparing for a successful season."

"I'd no idea of this," breathed Edward Henry. He was dashed. "I'm

awfully sorry!"

"Yes, no doubt. But there it is!"

Silence fell. He knew not what to say. He felt himself in one way

innocent, but he felt himself in another way blackly guilty. His

remorse for the telephone-trick which he had practised on Rose Euclid

burst forth again after a long period of quiescence simulating death,

and actually troubled him.... No, he was not guilty! He insisted in

his heart that he was not guilty! And yet--and yet--

No taxicab ever travelled so quickly as that taxi-cab. Before he could

gather together his forces it had arrived beneath the awning of the

Buckingham Palace Hotel.

His last words to her were:

"Now, I sha'nt change the day of my stone-laying. But don't worry about

your conference. You know it'll be perfectly all right." He spoke

archly, with a brave attempt at cajolery; but in the recesses of his

soul he was not sure that she had not defeated him in this their first

encounter. However, Seven Sachs might talk as he chose--she was not

such a persuasive creature as all that! She had scarcely even tried to

be persuasive.

At about a quarter-past six, when he saw his underling again, he said to

Mr. Marrier:

"Marrier, I've got a great idea. We'll have that corner-stone-laying at

night. After the theatres. Say half-past eleven. Torchlight!

Fireworks from the cranes! It'll tickle old Pilgrim to death. I shall

have a marquee with match-boarding sides fixed up inside, and heat it

with a few of those smokeless stoves. We can easily lay on electricity.

It will be absolutely the most sensational stone-laying that ever was.

It'll be in all the papers all over the blessed world. Think of it!

Torches! Fireworks from the cranes! ... But I won't change the

day--neither for Miss April nor anybody else."

Mr. Marrier dissolved in laudations.

"Well," Edward Henry agreed with false diffidence, "it'll knock spots

off some of 'em in this town!"

He felt that he had snatched victory out of defeat. But the next moment

he was capable of feeling that Elsie April had defeated him even in his

victory. Anyhow, she was a most disconcerting and fancy-monopolising

creature.

There was one source of unsullied gratification: he had shaved off his

beard.

VI.

"Come up here, Sir John," Edward Henry called. "You'll see better, and

you'll be out of the crowd. And I'll show you something."

He stood, in a fur coat, at the top of a short flight of rough-surfaced

steps between two unplastered walls--a staircase which ultimately was to

form part of an emergency exit from the dress-circle of the Regent

Theatre. Sir John Pilgrim, also in a fur coat, stood near the bottom of

the steps, with a glare of a Wells light full on him and throwing his

shadow almost up to Edward Henry's feet. Around, Edward Henry could

descry the vast mysterious forms of the building's skeleton--black in

places, but in other places lit up by bright rays from the gaiety below,

and showing glimpses of that gaiety in the occasional revelation of a

woman's cloak through slits in the construction. High overhead, two

gigantic cranes interlaced their arms; and even higher than the cranes,

shone the stars of the clear spring night.

The hour was nearly half-past twelve. The ceremony was concluded--and

successfully concluded. All London had indeed been present. Half the

aristocracy of England, and far more than half the aristocracy of the

London stage! The entire preciosity of the metropolis! Journalists

with influence enough to plunge the whole of Europe into war! In one

short hour Edward Henry's right hand (peeping out from the superb fur

coat which he had had the wit to buy) had made the acquaintance of

scores upon scores of the most celebrated right hands in Britain. He

had the sensation that in future, whenever he walked about the best

streets of the West End, he would be continually compelled to stop and

chat with august and renowned acquaintances, and that he would always be

taking off his hat to fine ladies who flashed by nodding from powerful

motor-cars. Indeed, Edward Henry was surprised at the number of famous

people who seemed to have nothing to do but attend advertising rituals

at midnight or thereabouts. Sir John Pilgrim had, as Marrier predicted,

attended to the advertisements. But Edward Henry had helped. And on the

day itself the evening newspapers had taken the bit between their teeth

and run off with the affair at a great pace. The affair was on all the

contents-bills hours before it actually happened. Edward Henry had been

interviewed several times, and had rather enjoyed that. Gradually he

had perceived that his novel idea for a corner-stone-laying had caught

the facile imagination of the London populace. For that night at least

he was famous--as famous as anybody!

Sir John had made a wondrous picturesque figure of himself as, in a

raised corner of the crowded and beflagged marquee, he had flourished a

trowel and talked about the great and enlightened public, and about the

highest function of the drama, and about the duty of the artist to

elevate, and about the solemn responsibility of theatrical managers, and

about the absence of petty jealousies in the world of the stage.

Everybody had vociferously applauded, while reporters turned rapidly the

pages of their note-books. "Ass!" Edward Henry had said to himself with

much force and sincerity,--meaning Sir John,--but he too had

vociferously applauded; for he was from the Five Towns, and in the Five

Towns people are like that! Then Sir John had declared the corner-stone

well and truly laid (it was on the corner which the electric sign of the

future was destined to occupy), and, after being thanked, had wandered

off shaking hands here and there absently, to arrive at length in the

office of the clerk of the works, where Edward Henry had arranged

suitably to refresh the stone-layer and a few choice friends of both

sexes.

He had hoped that Elsie April would somehow reach that little office.

But Elsie April was absent, indisposed. Her absence made the one

blemish on the affair's perfection. Elsie April, it appeared, had been

struck down by a cold which had entirely deprived her of her voice, so

that the performance of the Azure Society's Dramatic Club, so eagerly

anticipated by all London, had had to be postponed. Edward Henry bore

the misfortune of the Azure Society with stoicism, but he had been

extremely disappointed by the invisibility of Elsie April at his

stone-laying. His eyes had wanted her.

Sir John, awaking apparently out of a dream when Edward Henry had

summoned him twice, climbed the uneven staircase and joined his host and

youngest rival on the insecure planks and gangways that covered the

first floor of the Regent Theatre.

"Come higher," said Edward Henry, mounting upward to the beginnings of

the second story, above which hung suspended from the larger crane the

great cage that was employed to carry brick and stone from the ground.

The two fur coats almost mingled.

"Well, young man," said Sir John Pilgrim, "your troubles will soon be

beginning."

Now Edward Henry hated to be addressed as "young man," especially in the

patronising tone which Sir John used. Moreover, he had a suspicion that

in Sir John's mind was the illusion that Sir John alone was responsible

for the creation of the Regent Theatre--that without Sir John's aid as a

stone-layer it could never have existed.

"You mean my troubles as a manager?" said Edward Henry grimly.

"In twelve months from now, before I come back from my world's tour,

you'll be ready to get rid of this thing on any terms. You will be

wishing that you had imitated my example and kept out of Piccadilly

Circus. Piccadilly Circus is sinister, my Alderman--sinister."

"Come up into the cage, Sir John," said Edward Henry. "You'll get a

still better view. Rather fine, isn't it, even from here?"

He climbed up into the cage and helped Sir John to climb.

And, standing there in the immediate silence, Sir John murmured with

emotion:

"We are alone with London!"

Edward Henry thought:

"Cuckoo!"

They heard footsteps resounding on loose planks in a distant corner.

"Who's there?" Edward Henry called.

"Only me!" replied a voice. "Nobody takes any notice of me!"

"Who is it?" muttered Sir John.

"Alloyd, the architect," Edward Henry answered, and then calling loud:

"Come up here, Alloyd."

The muffled and coated figure approached, hesitated, and then joined the

other two in the cage.

"Let me introduce Mr. Alloyd, the architect--Sir John Pilgrim," said

Edward Henry.

"Ah!" said Sir John, bending towards Alloyd. "Are you the genius who

draws those amusing little lines and scrawls on transparent paper, Mr.

Alloyd? Tell me, are they really necessary for a building, or do you

only do them for your own fun? Quite between ourselves, you know! I've

often wondered."

Said Mr. Alloyd with a pale smile:

"Of course everyone looks on the architect as a joke!" The pause was

somewhat difficult.

"You promised us rockets, Mr. Machin," said Sir John. "My mind yearns

for rockets."

"Right you are!" Edward Henry complied. Close by, but somewhat above

them, was the crane-engine, manned by an engineer whom Edward Henry was

paying for overtime. A signal was given, and the cage containing the

proprietor and the architect of the theatre and Sir John Pilgrim bounded

most startlingly up into the air. Simultaneously it began to revolve

rapidly on its cable, as such cages will, whether filled with bricks or

with celebrities.

"Oh!" ejaculated Sir John, terror-struck, clinging hard to the side of

the cage.

"Oh!" ejaculated Mr. Alloyd, also clinging hard.

"I want you to see London," said Edward Henry, who had been through the

experience before.

The wind blew cold above the chimneys.

The cage came to a standstill exactly at the peak of the other crane.

London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of

Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street,

and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated

map, over which crawled mannikins and toy autobuses. At their feet a

long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another, with

the guests of the evening. The metropolis stretched away, lifting to

the north, and sinking to the south into jewelled river on whose curved

bank rose messages of light concerning whisky, tea, and beer. The

peaceful nocturnal roar of the city, dwindling every moment now, reached

them like an emanation from another world.

"You asked for a rocket, Sir John," said Edward Henry. "You shall have

it."

He had taken a box of fuses from his pocket. He struck one, and his

companions in the swaying cage now saw that a tremendous rocket was hung

to the peak of the other crane. He lighted the fuse.... An instant of

deathly suspense! ... And then with a terrific and a shattering bang and

splutter the rocket shot towards the kingdom of heaven, and there burst

into a vast dome of red blossoms which, irradiating a square mile of

roofs, descended slowly and softly on the West End like a benediction.

"You always want crimson, don't you, Sir John?" said Edward Henry, and

the easy cheeriness of his voice gradually tranquillised the alarm

natural to two very earthly men who for the first time found themselves

suspended insecurely over a gulf.

"I have seen nothing so impressive since the Russian ballet," murmured

Mr. Alloyd, recovering.

"You ought to go to Siberia, Alloyd," said Edward Henry.

Sir John Pilgrim, pretending now to be extremely brave, suddenly turned

on Edward Henry and in a convulsive grasp seized his hand.

"My friend," he said hoarsely, "a thought has just occurred to me: you

and I are the two most remarkable men in London!" He glanced up as the

cage trembled. "How thin that steel rope seems!"

The cage slowly descended, with many twists.

Edward Henry said not a word. He was too deeply moved by his own

triumph to be able to speak.

"Who else but me," he reflected, exultant, "could have managed this

affair as I've managed it? Did anyone else ever take Sir John Pilgrim

up into the sky like a load of bricks, and frighten his life out of

him?"

As the cage approached the platforms of the first story he saw two

people waiting there; one he recognised as the faithful, harmless

Marrier; the other was a woman.

"Someone here wants you urgently, Mr. Machin!" cried Marrier.

"By Jove," exclaimed Alloyd under his breath, "what a beautiful figure!

No girl as attractive as that ever wanted _me_ urgently! Some folks do

have luck!"

The woman had moved a little away when the cage landed. Edward Henry

followed her along the planking.

It was Elsie April.

"I thought you were ill in bed," he breathed, astounded.

Her answering voice reached him, scarcely audible:

"I'm only hoarse. My cousin Rose has arrived to-night in secret at

Tilbury by the _Minnetonka_."

"The _Minnetonka_!" he muttered. Staggering coincidence! Mystic

heralding of misfortune!

"I was sent for," the pale ghost of a delicate voice continued. "She's

broken, ruined; no courage left. Awful fiasco in Chicago! She's hiding

now at a little hotel in Soho. She absolutely declined to come to my

hotel. I've done what I could for the moment. As I was driving by here

just now I saw the rocket, and I thought of you. I thought you ought to

know it. I thought it was my duty to tell you."

She held her muff to her mouth. She seemed to be trembling.

A heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Excuse me, sir," said a strong, rough voice. "Are you the gent that

fired off the rocket? It's against the law to do that kind o' thing

here, and you ought to know it. I shall have to trouble you--"

It was a policeman of the C division.

Sir John was disappearing, with his stealthy and conspiratorial air,

down the staircase.

CHAPTER VIII

DEALING WITH ELSIE

I.

The headquarters of the Azure Society were situate in Marloes Road, for

no other reason than that it happened so. Though certain famous people

inhabit Marloes Road, no street could well be less fashionable than this

thoroughfare, which is very arid and very long, and a very long way off

the centre of the universe.

"The Azure Society, you know!" Edward Henry added when he had given the

exact address to the chauffeur of the taxi.

The chauffeur, however, did not know, and did not seem to be ashamed of

his ignorance. His attitude indicated that he despised Marloes Road,

and was not particularly anxious for his vehicle to be seen therein,

especially on a wet night, but that nevertheless he would endeavour to

reach it. When he did reach it, and observed the large concourse of

shining automobiles that struggled together in the rain in front of the

illuminated number named by Edward Henry, the chauffeur admitted to

himself that for once he had been mistaken, and his manner of receiving

money from Edward Henry was generously respectful.

Originally the headquarters of the Azure Society had been a seminary and

schoolmistress' house. The thoroughness with which the buildings had

been transformed showed that money was not among the things which the

society had to search for. It had rich resources, and it had also high

social standing; and the deferential commissionaires at the doors and

the fluffy-aproned, appealing girls who gave away programmes in the

foyer were a proof that the society, while doubtless anxious about such

subjects as the persistence of individuality after death, had no desire

to reconstitute the community on a democratic basis. It was above such

transient trifles of reform, and its high endeavours were confined to

questions of immortality, of the infinite, of sex, and of art: which

questions it discussed in fine raiment and with all the punctilio of

courtly politeness.

Edward Henry was late, in common with some two hundred other people of

whom the majority were elegant women wearing Paris or almost Paris gowns

with a difference. As on the current of the variegated throng he

drifted through corridors into the bijou theatre of the society, he

could not help feeling proud of his own presence there; and yet at the

same time he was scorning, in his Five Towns way, the preciosity and the

simperings of these his fellow creatures. Seated in the auditorium, at

the end of a row, he was aware of an even keener satisfaction as people

bowed and smiled at him; for the theatre was so tiny and the reunion so

choice that it was obviously an honour and a distinction to have been

invited to such an exclusive affair. To the evening first fixed for the

dramatic _soiree_ of the Azure Society he had received no invitation.

But shortly after the postponement due to Elsie April's indisposition an

envelope addressed by Marrier himself, and containing the sacred card,

had arrived for him in Bursley. His instinct had been to ignore it, and

for two days he had ignored it, and then he noticed in one corner the

initials "E.A." Strange that it did not occur to him immediately that

E.A. stood, or might stand, for Elsie April!

Reflection brings wisdom and knowledge. In the end he was absolutely

convinced that E.A. stood for Elsie April; and at the last moment,

deciding that it would be the act of a fool and a coward to decline what

was practically a personal request from a young and enchanting woman, he

had come to London--short of sleep, it is true, owing to local

convivialities, but he had come. And, curiously, he had not

communicated with Marrier. Marrier had been extremely taken up with the

dramatic _soiree_ of the Azure Society, which Edward Henry justifiably

but quite privately resented. Was he not paying three pounds a week to

Marrier?

And now, there he sat, known, watched, a notoriety, the card who had

raised Pilgrim to the skies, probably the only theatrical proprietor in

the crowded and silent audience; and he was expecting anxiously to see

Elsie April again--across the footlights! He had not seen her since the

night of the stone-laying, over a week earlier. He had not sought to

see her. He had listened then to the delicate tones of her weak,

whispering, thrilling voice, and had expressed regret for Rose Euclid's

plight. But he had done no more. What could he have done? Clearly he

could not have offered money to relieve the plight of Rose Euclid, who

was the cousin of a girl as wealthy and as sympathetic as Elsie April.

To do so would have been to insult Elsie. Yet he felt guilty none the

less. An odd situation! The delicate tones of Elsie's weak,

whispering, thrilling voice on the scaffolding haunted his memory, and

came back with strange clearness as he sat waiting for the curtain to

ascend.

There was an outburst of sedate applause, and a turning of heads to the

right. Edward Henry looked in that direction. Rose Euclid herself was

bowing from one of the two boxes on the first tier. Instantly she had

been recognised and acknowledged, and the clapping had in nowise

disturbed her. Evidently she accepted it as a matter of course. How

famous, after all, she must be, if such an audience would pay her such a

meed! She was pale, and dressed glitteringly in white. She seemed

younger, more graceful, much more handsome, more in accordance with her

renown. She was at home and at ease up there in the brightness of

publicity. The imposing legend of her long career had survived the

eclipse in the United States. Who could have guessed that some ten days

before she had landed heart-broken and ruined at Tilbury from the

_Minnetonka_?

Edward Henry was impressed.

"She's none so dusty!" he said to himself in the incomprehensible slang

of the Five Towns. The phrase was a high compliment to Rose Euclid,

aged fifty and looking anything you like over thirty. It measured the

extent to which he was impressed.

Yes, he felt guilty. He had to drop his eyes, lest hers should catch

them. He examined guiltily the programme, which announced "The New Don

Juan," a play "in three acts and in verse"--author unnamed. The curtain

went up.

II.

And with the rising of the curtain began Edward Henry's torture and

bewilderment. The scene disclosed a cloth upon which was painted, to

the right, a vast writhing purple cuttlefish whose finer tentacles were

lost above the proscenium-arch, and to the left an enormous crimson

oblong patch with a hole in it. He referred to the programme, which

said: "Act. I. A castle in the forest," and also "Scenery and costumes

designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A." The cuttlefish, then, was the

purple forest, or perhaps one tree in the forest, and the oblong patch

was the crimson castle. The stage remained empty, and Edward Henry had

time to perceive that the footlights were unlit, and that rays came only

from the flies and from the wings.

He glanced round. Nobody had blenched. Quite confused, he referred

again to the programme and deciphered in the increasing gloom, "Lighting

by Cosmo Clark," in very large letters.

Two yellow-clad figures of no particular sex glided into view, and at

the first words which they uttered Edward Henry's heart seemed in

apprehension to cease to beat. A fear seized him. A few more words,

and the fear became a positive assurance and realisation of evil. "The

New Don Juan" was simply a pseudonym for Carlo Trent's "Orient Pearl"!

... He had always known that it would be. Ever since deciding to accept

the invitation he had lived under just that menace. "The Orient Pearl"

seemed to be pursuing him like a sinister destiny.

Weakly he consulted yet again the programme. Only one character bore a

name familiar to the Don Juan story; to wit, "Haidee"; and opposite that

name was the name of Elsie April. He waited for her,--he had no other

interest in the evening,--and he waited in resignation. A young female

troubadour (styled in the programme "the messenger") emerged from the

unseen depths of the forest in the wings and ejaculated to the hero and

his friend: "The woman appears." But it was not Elsie that appeared.

Six times that troubadour messenger emerged and ejaculated, "The woman

appears," and each time Edward Henry was disappointed. But at the

seventh heralding--the heralding of the seventh and highest heroine of

this drama in hexameters--Elsie did at length appear.

And Edward Henry became happy. He understood little more of the play

than at the historic breakfast-party of Sir John Pilgrim; he was well

confirmed in his belief that the play was exactly as preposterous as a

play in verse must necessarily be; his manly contempt for verse was more

firmly established than ever--but Elsie April made an exquisite figure

between the castle and the forest; her voice did really set up physical

vibrations in his spine. He was deliciously convinced that if she

remained on the stage from everlasting to everlasting, just so long

could he gaze thereat without surfeit and without other desire. The

mischief was that she did not remain on the stage. With despair he saw

her depart; and the close of the act was ashes in his mouth.

The applause was tremendous. It was not as tremendous as that which had

greeted the plate-smashing comedy at the Hanbridge Empire, but it was

far more than sufficiently enthusiastic to startle and shock Edward

Henry. In fact, his cold indifference was so conspicuous amid that

fever, that in order to save his face he had to clap and to smile.

And the dreadful thought crossed his mind, traversing it like the

shudder of a distant earthquake that presages complete destruction:

"Are the ideas of the Five Towns all wrong? Am I a provincial after

all?"

For hitherto, though he had often admitted to himself that he was a

provincial, he had never done so with sincerity; but always in a manner

of playful and rather condescending badinage.

III.

"Did you ever see such scenery and costumes?" some one addressed him

suddenly when the applause had died down. It was Mr. Alloyd, who had

advanced up the aisle from the back row of the stalls.

"No, I never did!" Edward Henry agreed.

"It's wonderful how Givington has managed to get away from the childish

realism of the modern theatre," said Mr. Alloyd, "without being

ridiculous."

"You think so!" said Edward Henry judicially. "The question is, Has he?"

"Do you mean it's too realistic for you?" cried Mr. Alloyd. "Well, you

_are_ advanced! I didn't know you were as anti-representational as all

that!"

"Neither did I!" said Edward Henry. "What do you think of the play?"

"Well," answered Mr. Alloyd low and cautiously, with a somewhat shamed

grin, "between you and me, I think the play's bosh."

"Come, come!" Edward Henry murmured as if in protest.

The word "bosh" was almost the first word of the discussion which he had

comprehended, and the honest familiar sound of it did him good.

Nevertheless, keeping his presence of mind, he had forborne to welcome

it openly. He wondered what on earth "anti-representational" could

mean. Similar conversations were proceeding around him, and each could

be very closely heard, for the reason that, the audience being frankly

intellectual and anxious to exchange ideas, the management had wisely

avoided the expense and noise of an orchestra. The entr'acte was like a

_conversazione_ of all the cultures.

"I wish you'd give us some scenery and costumes like this in _your_

theatre," said Alloyd as he strolled away.

The remark stabbed him like a needle; the pain was gone in an instant,

but it left a vague fear behind it, as of the menace of a mortal injury.

It is a fact that Edward Henry blushed and grew gloomy, and he scarcely

knew why. He looked about him timidly, half defiantly. A magnificently

arrayed woman in the row in front, somewhat to the right, leaned back

and towards him, and behind her fan said:

"You're the only manager here, Mr. Machin! How alive and alert you are!"

Her voice seemed to be charged with a hidden meaning.

"D'you think so?" said Edward Henry. He had no idea who she might be.

He had probably shaken hands with her at his stone-laying, but if so he

had forgotten her face. He was fast becoming one of the oligarchical

few who are recognised by far more people than they recognise.

"A beautiful play!" said the woman. "Not merely poetic, but

intellectual. And an extraordinarily acute criticism of modern

conditions!"

He nodded. "What do you think of the scenery?" he asked.

"Well, of course candidly," said the woman, "I think it's silly. I dare

say I'm old-fashioned."

"I dare say," murmured Edward Henry.

"They told me you were very ironic," said she, flushing but meek.

"They!" Who? Who in the world of London had been labelling him as

ironic? He was rather proud.

"I hope if you _do_ do this kind of play,--and we're all looking to you,

Mr. Machin," said the lady making a new start,--"I hope you won't go in

for these costumes and scenery. That would never do!"

Again the stab of the needle!

"It wouldn't," he said.

"I'm delighted you think so," said she.

An orange telegram came travelling from hand to hand along that row of

stalls, and ultimately, after skipping a few persons, reached the

magnificently arrayed woman, who read it and then passed it to Edward

Henry.

"Splendid!" she exclaimed. "Splendid!"

Edward Henry read: "Released. Isabel."

"What does it mean?"

"It's from Isabel Joy--at Marseilles."

"Really!"

Edward Henry's ignorance of affairs round about the centre of the

universe was occasionally distressing--to himself in particular. And

just now he gravely blamed Mr. Marrier, who had neglected to post him

about Isabel Joy. But how could Marrier honestly earn his three pounds

a week if he was occupied night and day with the organising and

management of these precious dramatic _soirees_? Edward Henry decided

that he must give Mr. Marrier a piece of his mind at the first

opportunity.

"Don't you know?" questioned the dame.

"How should I?" he parried. "I'm only a provincial."

"But surely," pursued the dame, "you knew we'd sent her round the world.

She started on the _Kandahar_, the ship that you stopped Sir John

Pilgrim from taking. She almost atoned for his absence at Tilbury.

Twenty-five reporters, anyway!"

Edward Henry sharply slapped his thigh, which in the Five Towns

signifies, "I shall forget my own name next."

Of course! Isabel Joy was the advertising emissary of the Militant

Suffragette Society, sent forth to hold a public meeting and make a

speech in the principal ports of the world. She had guaranteed to

circuit the globe and to be back in London within a hundred days, to

speak in at least five languages, and to get herself arrested at least

three times en route. Of course! Isabel Joy had possessed a very fair

share of the newspapers on the day before the stone-laying, but Edward

Henry had naturally had too many preoccupations to follow her exploits.

After all, his momentary forgetfulness was rather excusable.

"She's made a superb beginning!" said the resplendent dame, taking the

telegram from Edward Henry and inducting it into another row. "And

before three months are out she'll be the talk of the entire earth.

You'll see!"

"Is everybody a suffragette here?" asked Edward Henry simply, as his

eyes witnessed the satisfaction spread by the voyaging telegram.

"Practically," said the dame. "These things always go hand in hand,"

she added in a deep tone.

"What things?" the provincial demanded.

But just then the curtain rose on the second act.

IV.

"Won't you cam up to Miss April's dressing-room?" said Mr. Marrier, who

in the midst of the fulminating applause after the second act seemed to

be inexplicably standing over him, having appeared in an instant out of

nowhere like a genie.

The fact was that Edward Henry had been gently and innocently dozing.

It was in part the deep obscurity of the auditorium, in part his own

physical fatigue, and in part the secret nature of poetry that had been

responsible for this restful slumber. He had remained awake without

difficulty during the first portion of the act, in which Elsie

April--the orient pearl--had had a long scene of emotion and tears,

played, as Edward Henry thought, magnificently in spite of its inherent

ridiculousness; but later, when gentle _Haidee_ had vanished away and

the fateful troubadour messenger had begun to resume her announcements

of "The woman appears," Edward Henry's soul had miserably yielded to his

body and to the temptation of darkness. The upturned lights and the

ringing hosannahs had roused him to a full sense of sin, but he had not

quite recovered all his faculties when Marrier startled him.

"Yes, yes! Of course! I was coming," he answered a little petulantly.

But no petulance could impair the beaming optimism on Mr. Marrier's

features. To judge by those features, Mr. Marrier, in addition to

having organised and managed the _soiree_, might also have written the

piece and played every part in it, and founded the Azure Society and

built its private theatre. The hour was Mr. Marrier's.

Elsie April's dressing-room was small and very thickly populated, and

the threshold of it was barred by eager persons who were half in and

half out of the room. Through these Mr. Marrier's authority forced a

way. The first man Edward Henry recognised in the tumult of bodies was

Mr. Rollo Wrissell, whom he had not seen since their meeting at

Slosson's.

"Mr. Wrissell," said the glowing Marrier, "let me introduce Mr. Alderman

Machin, of the Regent Theatah."

"Clumsy fool!" thought Edward Henry, and stood as if entranced.

But Mr. Wrissell held out a hand with the perfection of urbane

_insouciance_.

"How d'you do, Mr. Machin?" said he. "I hope you'll forgive me for not

having followed your advice."

This was a lesson to Edward Henry. He learnt that you should never show

a wound, and if possible never feel one. He admitted that in such

details of social conduct London might be in advance of the Five Towns,

despite the Five Towns' admirable downrightness.

Lady Woldo was also in the dressing-room, glorious in black. Her beauty

was positively disconcerting, and the more so on this occasion as she

was bending over the faded Rose Euclid, who sat in a corner surrounded

by a court. This court, comprising comparatively uncelebrated young

women and men, listened with respect to the conversation of the peeress

(who called Rose "my dear"), the great star-actress, and the now

somewhat notorious Five Towns character, Edward Henry Machin.

"Miss April is splendid, isn't she?" said Edward Henry to Lady Woldo.

"Oh! My word, yes!" replied Lady Woldo nicely, warmly, yet with a

certain perfunctoriness. Edward Henry was astonished that everybody was

not passionately enthusiastic about the charm of Elsie's performance.

Then Lady Woldo added: "But what a part for Miss Euclid! What a part

for her!"

And there were murmurs of approbation.

Rose Euclid gazed at Edward Henry palely and weakly. He considered her

much less effective here than in her box. But her febrile gaze was

effective enough to produce in him the needle-stab again, the feeling of

gloom, of pessimism, of being gradually overtaken by an unseen and

mysterious avenger.

"Yes, indeed!" said he.

He thought to himself: "Now's the time for me to behave like Edward

Henry Machin, and teach these people a thing or two!" But he could not.

A pretty young girl summoned all her forces to address the great

proprietor of the Regent, to whom, however, she had not been introduced,

and with a charming nervous earnest lisp said:

"But don't you think it's a great play, Mr. Machin?"

"Of course!" he replied, inwardly employing the most fearful and

shocking anathemas.

"We were sure _you_ would!"

The young people glanced at each other with the satisfaction of proved

prophets.

"D'you know that not another manager has taken the trouble to come

here!" said a second earnest young woman.

Edward Henry's self-consciousness was now acute. He would have paid a

ransom to be alone on a desert island in the Indian seas. He looked

downwards, and noticed that all these bright eager persons, women and

men, were wearing blue stockings or socks.

"Miss April is free now," said Marrier in his ear.

The next instant he was talking alone to Elsie in another corner, while

the rest of the room respectfully observed.

"So you deigned to come!" said Elsie April. "You did get my card!"

A little paint did her no harm, and the accentuation of her eyebrows and

lips and the calculated disorder of her hair were not more than her

powerful effulgent physique could stand. In a costume of green and

silver she was magnificent, overwhelmingly magnificent.

Her varying voice and her glance, at once sincere, timid, and bold,

produced the most singular sensations behind Edward Henry's soft-frilled

shirt-front. And he thought that he had never been through any

experience so disturbing and so fine as just standing in front of her.

"I ought to be saying nice things to her," he reflected; but, no doubt

because he had been born in the Five Towns, he could not formulate in

his mind a single nice thing.

"Well, what do you think of it?" she asked, looking full at him, and the

glance too had a strange significance. It was as if she had said: "Are

you a man, or aren't you?"

"I think you're splendid," he exclaimed.

"Now please!" she protested. "Don't begin in that strain. I know I'm

very good for an amateur--"

"But really! I'm not joking!"

She shook her head.

"What do you think of my part for Rose? Wouldn't she be tremendous in

it? Wouldn't she be tremendous? What a chance!"

He was acutely uncomfortable, but even his discomfort was somehow a joy.

"Yes," he admitted. "Yes."

"Oh! Here's Carlo Trent," said she.

He heard Trent's triumphant voice carrying the end of a conversation

into the room: "If he hadn't been going away," Carlo Trent was saying,

"Pilgrim would have taken it. Pilgrim--"

The poet's eyes met Edward Henry's, and the sentence was never finished.

"How d'ye do, Machin?" murmured the poet.

Then a bell began to ring and would not stop.

"You're staying for the reception afterwards?" said Elsie April as the

room emptied.

"Is there one?"

"Of course."

It seemed to Edward Henry that they exchanged silent messages.

V.

Some time after the last hexameter had rolled forth, and the curtain had

finally fallen on the immense and rapturous success of Carlo Trent's

play in three acts and in verse, Edward Henry, walking about the crowded

stage where the reception was being held, encountered Elsie April, who

was still in her gorgeous dress of green and silver. She was chatting

with Marrier, who instantly left her, thus displaying a discretion such

as an employer would naturally expect from a factotum to whom he was

paying three pounds a week.

Edward Henry's heart began to beat in a manner which troubled him and

made him wonder what could be happening at the back of the soft-frilled

shirt-front that he had obtained in imitation of Mr. Seven Sachs.

"Not much elbow-room here!" he said lightly. He was very anxious to be

equal to the occasion.

She gazed at him under her emphasized eyebrows. He noticed that there

were little touches of red on her delightful nostrils.

"No," she answered with direct simplicity. "Suppose we try somewhere

else."

She turned her back on all the amiable and intellectual babble,

descended three steps on the prompt side, and opened a door. The swish

of her brocaded spreading skirt was loud and sensuous. He followed her

into an obscure chamber in which several figures were moving to and fro

and talking.

"What's this place?" he asked. Involuntarily his voice was diminished

to a whisper.

"It's one of the discussion-rooms," said she. "It used to be a

classroom, I expect, before the society took the buildings over. You

see the theatre was the general schoolroom."

They sat down inobtrusively in an embrasure. None among the mysterious

moving figures seemed to remark them.

"But why are they talking in the dark?" Edward Henry asked behind his

hand.

"To begin with, it isn't quite dark," she said. "There's the light of

the street-lamp through the window. But it has been found that serious

discussions can be carried on much better without too much light....

I'm not joking." (It was as if in the gloom her ears had caught his

faint sardonic smile.)

Said the voice of one of the figures:

"Can you tell me what is the origin of the decay of realism? Can you

tell me that?"

Suddenly, in the ensuing silence, there was a click and a tiny electric

lamp shot its beam. The hand which held the lamp was the hand of Carlo

Trent. He raised it and flashed the trembling ray in the inquirer's

face. Edward Henry recalled Carlo's objection to excessive electricity

in the private drawing-room at Wilkins's.

"Why do you ask such a question?" Carlo Trent challenged the enquirer,

brandishing the lamp. "I ask you why do you ask it?"

The other also drew forth a lamp and, as it were, cocked it and let it

off at the features of Carlo Trent. And thus the two stood, statuesque

and lit, surrounded by shadowy witnesses of the discussion.

The door creaked and yet another figure, silhouetted for an instant

against the illumination of the stage, descended into the

discussion-chamber.

Carlo Trent tripped towards the newcomer, bent with his lamp, lifted

delicately the hem of the newcomer's trousers, and gazed at the colour

of his sock, which was blue.

"All right!" said he.

"The champagne and sandwiches are served," said the newcomer.

"You've not answered me, sir," Carlo Trent faced once more his opponent

in the discussion. "You've not answered me."

Whereupon, the lamps being extinguished, they all filed forth, the door

swung to of its own accord, shutting out the sound of babble from the

stage, and Edward Henry and Elsie April were left silent and solitary to

the sole ray of the street-lamp.

All the Five Towns shrewdness in Edward Henry's character, all the

husband in him, all the father in him, all the son in him, leapt to his

lips and tried to say to Elsie, "Shall _we_ go and inspect the champagne

and sandwiches too?" and failed to say these incantatory words of

salvation!

And the romantic adventurous fool in him rejoiced at their failure. For

he was adventurously happy in his propinquity to that simple and sincere

creature. He was so happy, and his heart was so active, that he even

made no caustic characteristic comment on the singular behaviour of the

beings who had just abandoned them to their loneliness. He was also

proud because he was sitting alone nearly in the dark with a piquant and

wealthy, albeit amateur, actress who had just participated in a triumph

at which the spiritual aristocracy of London had assisted.

VI.

Two thoughts ran through his head, shooting in and out and to and fro

among his complex sensations of pleasure. The first was that he had

never been in such a fix before, despite his enterprising habits. And

the second was that neither Elsie April nor anybody else connected with

his affairs in London had ever asked him whether he was married, nor

assumed by any detail of behaviour towards him that there existed the

possibility of his being married. Of course he might, had he chosen,

have informed a few of them that a wife and children possessed him, but

then, really, would not that have been equivalent to attaching a label

to himself "Married"?--a procedure which had to him the stamp of

provinciality.

Elsie April said nothing. And as she said nothing he was obliged to say

something, if only to prove to both of them that he was not a mere

tongue-tied provincial. He said:

"You know I feel awfully out of it here in this society of yours!"

"Out of it?" she exclaimed, and her voice thrilled as she resented his

self-depreciation.

"It's over my head--right over it!"

"Now, Mr. Machin," she said, dropping somewhat that rich, low voice, "I

quite understand that there are some things about the society you don't

like, trifles that you're inclined to laugh at. _I_ know that. Many of

us know it. But it can't be helped in an organisation like ours. It's

even essential. Don't be too hard on us. Don't be sarcastic."

"But I'm not sarcastic!" he protested.

"Honest?" She turned to him quickly. He could descry her face in the

gloom, and the forward bend of her shoulders, and the backward sweep of

her arms resting on the seat, and the straight droop of her Egyptian

shawl from her inclined body.

"Honest!" he solemnly insisted.

The exchange of this single word was so intimate that it shifted their

conversation to a different level--a level at which each seemed to be

assuring the other that intercourse between them could never be aught

but utterly sincere thenceforward, and that indeed in future they would

constitute a little society of their own, ideal in its organisation.

"Then you're too modest," she said decidedly. "There was no one here

to-night who's more respected than you are. No one! Immediately I

first spoke to you--I daresay you don't remember that afternoon at the

Grand Babylon Hotel--I knew you weren't like the rest. And don't I know

them? Don't I know them?"

"But how did you know I'm not like the rest?" asked Edward Henry. The

line which she was taking had very much surprised him, and charmed him.

The compliment, so serious and urgent in tone, was intensely agreeable,

and it made an entirely new experience in his career. He thought: "Oh!

There's no mistake about it. These London women are marvellous!

They're just as straight and in earnest as the best of our little lot

down there. But they've got something else. There's no comparison!"

The unique word to describe the indescribable floated into his head:

"Scrumptuous!" What could not life be with such semi-divine creatures?

He dreamt of art drawing-rooms softly shaded at midnight. And his

attitude towards even poetry was modified.

"I knew you weren't like the rest," said she, "by your look; by the way

you say everything you _do_ say. We all know it. And I'm sure you're

far more than clever enough to be perfectly aware that we all know it.

Just see how everyone looked at you to-night!"

Yes, he had in fact been aware of the glances.

"I think I ought to tell you," she went on, "that I was rather unfair to

you that day in talking about my cousin--in the taxi. You were quite

right to refuse to go into partnership with her. She thinks so too.

We've talked it over, and we're quite agreed. Of course it did seem

hard--at the time, and her bad luck in America seemed to make it worse.

But you were quite right. You can work much better alone. You must

have felt that instinctively--far quicker than we felt it."

"Well," he murmured, confused, "I don't know--"

Could this be she who had too openly smiled at his skirmish with an

artichoke?

"Oh, Mr. Machin," she burst out, "you've got an unprecedented

opportunity, and, thank Heaven, you're the man to use it! We're all

expecting so much from you, and we know we sha'n't be disappointed."

"D'ye mean the theatre?" he asked, alarmed as it were amid rising

waters.

"The theatre," said she gravely. "You're the one man that can save

London. No one _in_ London can do it! ... _You_ have the happiness of

knowing what your mission is, and of knowing too that you are equal to

it. What good fortune! I wish I could say as much for myself. I want

to do something! I try! But what can I do? Nothing--really! You've no

idea of the awful loneliness that comes from a feeling of inability."

"Loneliness!" he repeated. "But surely--" He stopped.

"Loneliness," she insisted. Her little chin was now in her little hand,

and her dim face upturned.

And suddenly a sensation of absolute and marvellous terror seized Edward

Henry. He was more afraid than he had ever been--and yet once or twice

in his life he had felt fear. His sense of true perspective--one of his

most precious qualities--returned. He thought: "I've got to get out of

this." Well, the door was not locked. It was only necessary to turn

the handle, and security lay on the other side of the door! He had but

to rise and walk. And he could not. He might just as well have been

manacled in a prison-cell. He was under an enchantment.

"A man," murmured Elsie, "a man can never realise the loneliness--" She

ceased.

He stirred uneasily.

"About this play," he found himself saying.

And yet why should he mention the play in his fright? He pretended to

himself not to know why. But he knew why. His instinct had seen in the

topic of the play the sole avenue of salvation.

"A wonderful thing, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes," he said; and then, most astonishingly to himself, added:

"I've decided to do it."

"We knew you would," she said calmly. "At any rate I did.... You'll

open with it of course."

"Yes," he answered desperately, and proceeded, with the most

extraordinary bravery: "If you'll act in it."

Immediately on hearing these last words issue from his mouth he knew

that a fool had uttered them, and that the bravery was mere rashness;

for Elsie's responding gesture reinspired him afresh with the exquisite

terror which he had already begun to conjure away.

"You think Miss Euclid ought to have the part," he added quickly, before

she could speak.

"Oh, I do!" cried Elsie positively and eagerly. "Rose will do simply

wonders with that part. You see she can speak verse. I can't. I'm

nobody. I only took it because--"

"Aren't you anybody?" he contradicted. "Aren't you anybody? I can just

tell you--"

There he was again, bringing back the delicious terror! An astounding

situation!

But the door creaked. The babble from the stage invaded the room. And

in a second the enchantment was lifted from him. Several people

entered. He sighed, saying within himself to the disturbers:

"I'd have given you a hundred-pound piece if you'd been five minutes

sooner."

And yet simultaneously he regretted their arrival. And, more curious

still, though he well remembered the warning words of Mr. Seven Sachs

concerning Elsie April, he did not consider that they were justified.

She had not been a bit persuasive ... only...

VII.

He sat down to the pianisto with a strange and agreeable sense of

security. It is true that, owing to the time of year, the drawing-room

had been, in the figurative phrase, turned upside down by the process of

spring-cleaning, which his unexpected arrival had surprised in fullest

activity. But he did not mind that. He abode content among rolled

carpets, a swathed chandelier, piled chairs, and walls full of pale

rectangular spaces where pictures had been. Early that morning, after a

brief night spent partly in bed and partly in erect contemplation of his

immediate past and his immediate future, he had hurried back to his

pianisto and his home--to the beings and things that he knew and that

knew him.

In the train he had had the pleasure of reading in sundry newspapers

that "The Orient Pearl," by Carlo Trent (who was mentioned in terms of

startling respect and admiration), had been performed on the previous

evening at the dramatic _soiree_ of the Azure Society, with all the

usual accompaniments of secrecy and exclusiveness, in its private

theatre in Kensington, and had been accepted on the spot by Mr. E. H.

Machin ("that most enterprising and enlightened recruit to the ranks of

theatrical managers ") for production at the new Regent Theatre. And

further, that Mr. Machin intended to open with it. And still further,

that his selection of such a play, which combined in the highest degree

the poetry of Mr. W. B. Yeats with the critical intellectuality of Mr.

Bernard Shaw, was of excellent augury for London's dramatic future, and

that the "upward movement" must on no account be thought to have failed

because of the failure of certain recent ill-judged attempts, by persons

who did not understand their business, to force it in particular

directions. And still further, that he, Edward Henry, had engaged for

the principal part Miss Rose Euclid, perhaps the greatest emotional

actress the English-speaking peoples had ever had, but who unfortunately

had not been sufficiently seen of late on the London stage, and that

this would be her first appearance after her recent artistic successes

in the United States. And lastly, that Mr. Marrier (whose name would be

remembered in connection with ... etc., etc.) was Mr. E. H. Machin's

acting manager and technical adviser. Edward Henry could trace the hand

of Marrier in all the paragraphs. Marrier had lost no time.

Mrs. Machin, senior, came into the drawing-room just as he was adjusting

the "Tannhaeuser" overture to the mechanician. The piece was one of his

major favourites.

"This is no place for you, my lad," said Mrs. Machin grimly, glancing

round the room. "But I came to tell ye as th' mutton's been cooling at

least five minutes. You gave out as you were hungry."

"Keep your hair on, Mother," said he, springing up.

Barely twelve hours earlier he had been mincing among the elect and the

select and the intellectual and the poetic and the aristocratic; among

the lah-di-dah and Kensingtonian accents; among rouged lips and blue

hose and fixed simperings; in the centre of the universe. And he had

conducted himself with considerable skill accordingly. Nobody, on the

previous night, could have guessed from the cut of his fancy waistcoat,

or the judiciousness of his responses to remarks about verse, that his

wife often wore a white apron, or that his mother was--the woman she

was! He had not unskillfully caught many of the tricks of that

metropolitan environment. But now they all fell away from him, and he

was just Edward Henry--nay, he was almost the old Denry again.

"Who chose this mutton?" he asked as he bent over the juicy and rich

joint and cut therefrom exquisite thick slices with a carving-knife like

a razor.

"_I_ did, if ye want to know," said his mother. "Anything amiss with

it?" she challenged.

"No. It's fine."

"Yes," said she, "I'm wondering whether you get aught as good as that in

these grand hotels, as you call 'em."

"We don't," said Edward Henry. First, it was true, and secondly he was

anxious to be propitiatory, for he had a plan to further.

He looked at his wife. She was not talkative, but she had received him

in the hall with every detail of affection, if a little absent-mindedly,

owing to the state of the house. She had not been caustic, like his

mother, about this male incursion into spring-cleaning. She had not

informed the surrounding air that she failed to understand why them as

were in London couldn't stop in London for a bit, as his mother had.

Moreover, though the spring-cleaning fully entitled her to wear a white

apron at meals, she was not wearing a white apron, which was a sign to

him that she still loved him enough to want to please him. On the

whole, he was fairly optimistic about his plan of salvation.

Nevertheless, it was not until nearly the end of the meal, when one of

his mother's ample pies was being consumed, that he began to try to

broach it.

"Nell," he said, "I suppose you wouldn't care to come to London with

me?"

"Oh!" she answered smiling, a smile of a peculiar quality. It was

astonishing how that simple woman could put just one-tenth of one per

cent. of irony into a good-natured smile. "What's the meaning of this?"

Then she flushed. The flush touched Edward Henry in an extraordinary

manner.

("To think," he reflected, incredulously, "that only last night I was

talking in the dark to Elsie April--and here I am now!" And he

remembered the glory of Elsie's frock, and her thrilling voice in the

gloom, and that pose of hers as she leaned dimly forward.)

"Well," he said aloud, as naturally as he could. "That theatre's

beginning to get up on its hind legs now, and I should like you to see

it."

A difficult pass for him, as regards his mother! This was the first time

he had ever overtly spoken of the theatre in his mother's presence. In

the best bedroom he had talked of it, but even there with a certain

self-consciousness and false casualness. Now his mother stared straight

in front of her with an expression of which she alone among human beings

had the monopoly.

"I should like to," said Nellie generously.

"Well," said he, "I've got to go back to town to-morrow. Wilt come with

me, lass?"

"Don't be silly, Edward Henry," said she. "How can I leave Mother in the

middle of all this spring-cleaning?"

"You needn't leave Mother. We'll take her too," said Edward Henry

lightly.

"You won't!" observed Mrs. Machin.

"I _have_ to go to-morrow, Nell," said Edward Henry. "And I was

thinking you might as well come with me. It will be a change for you."

(He said to himself: "And not only have I to go to-morrow, but you

absolutely must come with me, my girl. That's the one thing to do.")

"It would be a change for me," Nellie agreed. She was beyond doubt

flattered and calmly pleased. "But I can't possibly come to-morrow. You

can see that for yourself, dear."

"No, I can't!" he cried impatiently. "What does it matter? Mother'll

be here. The kids'll be all right. After all, spring cleaning isn't

the day of judgment."

"Edward Henry," said his mother, cutting in between them like a thin

blade, "I wish you wouldn't be blasphemous. London's London, and

Bursley's Bursley." She had finished.

"It's quite out of the question for me to come to-morrow, dear. I must

have notice. I really must."

And Edward Henry saw with alarm that Nellie had made up her mind, and

that the flattered calm pleasure in his suggestion had faded from her

face.

"Oh, dash these domesticated women!" he thought, and shortly afterwards

departed, brooding, to the offices of the Thrift Club.

VIII.

He timed his return with exactitude, and, going straight up-stairs to

the chamber known indifferently as "Maisie's room" or "nurse's room,"

sure enough he found the three children there alone! They were fed,

washed, night-gowned, and even dressing-gowned; and this was the hour

when, while Nurse repaired the consequences of their revolutionary

conduct in the bathroom and other places, they were left to themselves.

Robert lay on the hearth-rug, the insteps of his soft, pink feet rubbing

idly against the pile of the rug, his elbows digging into the pile, his

chin on his fists, and a book perpendicularly beneath his eyes. Ralph,

careless adventurer rather than student, had climbed to the glittering

brass rail of Maisie's new bedstead, and was thereon imitating a

recently seen circus performance. Maisie, in the bed according to

regulation, and lying on the flat of her back, was singing nonchalantly

to the ceiling. Carlo, unaware that at that moment he might have been a

buried corpse but for the benignancy of Providence in his behalf, was

feeling sympathetic towards himself because he was slightly bored.

"Hello, kids!" Edward Henry greeted them. As he had seen them before

midday dinner, the more formal ceremonies of salutation after absence,

so hateful to the Five Towns temperament, were happily over and done

with.

Robert turned his head slightly, inspected his father with a judicial

detachment that hardly escaped the inimical, and then resumed his book.

("No one would think," said Edward Henry to himself, "that the person

who has just entered this room is the most enterprising and enlightened

of West End theatrical managers.")

"'Ello, Father!" shrilled Ralph. "Come and help me to stand on this

wire rope."

"It isn't a wire rope," said Robert from the hearth-rug, without

stirring. "It's a brass rail."

"Yes, it is a wire rope, because I can make it bend," Ralph retorted,

bumping down on the thing. "Anyhow, it's going to be a wire rope."

Maisie simply stuck several fingers into her mouth, shifted to one side,

and smiled at her father in a style of heavenly and mischievous

flirtatiousness.

"Well, Robert, what are you reading?" Edward Henry inquired in his best

fatherly manner, half authoritative and half humorous, while he formed

part of the staff of Ralph's circus.

"I'm not reading, I'm learning my spellings," replied Robert.

Edward Henry, knowing that the discipline of filial politeness must be

maintained, said: "'Learning my spellings'--what?"

"Learning my spellings, Father," Robert consented to say, but with a

savage air of giving way to the unreasonable demands of affected fools.

Why indeed should it be necessary in conversation always to end one's

sentence with the name or title of the person addressed?

"Well, would you like to go to London with me?"

"When?" the boy demanded cautiously. He still did not move, but his

ears seemed to prick up.

"To-morrow?"

"No thanks ... Father." His ears ceased their activity.

"No? Why not?"

"Because there's a spellings examination on Friday, and I'm going to be

top boy."

It was a fact that the infant (whose programmes were always somehow

arranged in advance, and were in his mind absolutely unalterable) could

spell the most obstreperous words. Quite conceivably he could spell

better than his father, who still showed an occasional tendency to write

"separate" with three e's and only one a.

"London's a fine place," said Edward Henry.

"I know," said Robert negligently.

"What's the population of London?"

"I don't know," said Robert with curtness, though he added after a

pause: "But I can spell population--p-o-p-u-l-a-t-i-o-n."

"_I'll_ come to London, Father, if you'll have me," said Ralph, grinning

good-naturedly.

"Will you!" said his father.

"Fahver," asked Maisie, wriggling, "have you brought me a doll?"

"I'm afraid I haven't."

"Mother said p'r'aps you would."

It was true, there had been talk of a doll; he had forgotten it.

"I tell you what I'll do," said Edward Henry, "I'll take you to London,

and you can choose a doll in London. You never saw such dolls as there

are in London--talking dolls that shut and open their eyes and say Papa

and Mamma, and all their clothes take off and on."

"Do they say 'Father?'" growled Robert.

"No, they don't," said Edward Henry.

"Why don't they?" growled Robert.

"When will you take me?" Maisie almost squealed.

"To-morrow."

"Certain sure, Father?"

"Yes."

"You promise, Father?"

"Of course I promise."

Robert at length stood up to judge for himself this strange and

agitating caprice of his father's for taking Maisie to London. He saw

that, despite spellings, it would never do to let Maisie alone go. He

was about to put his father through a cross-examination, but Edward

Henry dropped Ralph, who had been climbing up him as up a

telegraph-pole, on to the bed and went over to the window, nervously,

and tapped thereon.

Carlo followed him, wagging an untidy tail.

"Hello, Trent!" murmured Edward Henry, stooping and patting the dog.

Ralph exploded into loud laughter.

"Father's called Carlo 'Trent,'" he roared. "Father, have you forgotten

his name's Carlo?" It was one of the greatest jokes that Ralph had

heard for a long time.

Then Nellie hurried into the room, and Edward Henry, with a "Mustn't be

late for tea," as hurriedly left it.

Three minutes later, while he was bent over the lavatory basin, someone

burst into the bathroom. He lifted a soapy face.

It was Nellie, with disturbed features.

"What's this about your positively promising to take Maisie to London

to-morrow to choose a doll?"

"I'll take 'em all," he replied with absurd levity. "And you too!"

"But really--" she pouted, indicating that he must not carry the

ridiculous too far.

"Look here, d--n it," he said impulsively, "I _want_ you to come. And I

want you to come to-morrow. I knew it was the confounded infants you

wouldn't leave. You don't mean to tell me you can't arrange it--a woman

like you!"

She hesitated.

"And what am I to do with three children in a London hotel?"

"Take Nurse, naturally."

"Take Nurse?" she cried.

He imitated her with a grotesque exaggeration, yelling loudly, "Take

Nurse?" Then he planted a soap-sud on her fresh cheek.

She wiped it off carefully and smacked his arm. The next moment she was

gone, having left the door open.

"He _wants_ me to go to London to-morrow," he could hear her saying to

his mother on the landing.

"Confound it!" he thought. "Didn't she know that at dinner-time?"

"Bless us!" His mother's voice.

"And take the children--and Nurse!" his wife continued in a tone to

convey the fact that she was just as much disturbed as her mother-in-law

could possibly be by the eccentricities of the male.

"He's his father all over, that lad is!" said his mother strangely.

And Edward Henry was impressed by these words, for not once in seven

years did his mother mention his father.

Tea was an exciting meal.

"You'd better come too, Mother," said Edward Henry audaciously. "We'll

shut the house up."

"I come to no London," said she.

"Well, then, you can use the motor as much as you like while we're

away."

"I go about gallivanting in no motor," said his mother. "It'll take me

all my time to get this house straight against you come back."

"I haven't a _thing_ to go in!" said Nellie with a martyr's sigh.

After all (he reflected), though domesticated, she was a woman.

He went to bed early. It seemed to him that his wife, his mother, and

the nurse were active and whispering up and down the house till the very

middle of the night. He arose not late, but they were all three afoot

before him, active and whispering.

IX.

He found out on the morning after the highly complex transaction of

getting his family from Bursley to London that London held more problems

for him than ever. He was now not merely the proprietor of a theatre

approaching completion, but really a theatrical manager with a play to

produce, artistes to engage, and the public to attract. He had made two

appointments for that morning at the Majestic (he was not at the Grand

Babylon, because his wife had once stayed with him at the Majestic, and

he did not want to add to his anxieties the business of accustoming her

to a new and costlier luxury): one appointment at nine with Marrier, and

the other at ten with Nellie, family, and Nurse. He had expected to get

rid of Marrier before ten.

Among the exciting mail which Marrier had collected for him from the

Grand Babylon and elsewhere was the following letter:

_Buckingham Palace Hotel._

DEAR FRIEND: We are all so proud of you. I should like some time to

finish our interrupted conversation. Will you come and have lunch with

me one day here at 1.30? You needn't write. I know how busy you are.

Just telephone you are coming. But don't telephone between 12 and 1,

because at that time I _always_ take my constitutional in St. James's

Park.

Yours sincerely,

E. A.

"Well," he thought. "That's a bit thick, that is! She's stuck me up

with a dramatist I don't believe in, and a play I don't believe in, and

an actress I don't believe in, and now she--"

Nevertheless, to a certain extent he was bluffing himself; for, as he

pretended to put Elsie April back into her place, he had disturbing and

delightful visions of her. A clever creature! Uncannily clever!

Wealthy! Under thirty! Broad-minded! No provincial prejudices! ... Her

voice, that always affected his spine! Her delicious flattery! ... She

was no mean actress either! And the multifariousness of her seductive

charm! In fact, she was a regular woman of the world, such as you would

read about--if you did read! ... He was sitting with her again in the

obscurity of the discussion-room at the Azure Society's establishment.

His heart was beating again.

Pooh! ...

A single wrench, and he ripped up the letter and cast it into one of the

red-lined waste-paper baskets with which the immense and rather shabby

writing-room of the Majestic was dotted.

Before he had finished dealing with Mr. Marrier's queries and

suggestions--some ten thousand in all--the clock struck, and Nellie

tripped into the room. She was in black silk, with hints here and there

of gold chains. As she had explained, she had nothing to wear, and was

therefore obliged to fall back on the final resource of every woman in

her state. For in this connection "nothing to wear" signified "nothing

except my black silk"--at any rate, in the Five Towns.

"Mr. Marrier--my wife. Nellie, this is Mr. Marrier."

Mr. Marrier was profuse: no other word would describe his demeanour.

Nellie had the timidity of a young girl. Indeed, she looked quite

youthful, despite the aging influences of black silk.

"So that's your Mr. Marrier! I understood from you he was a clerk!"

said Nellie tartly, suddenly retransformed into the shrewd matron as

soon as Mr. Marrier had profusely gone. She had conceived Marrier as a

sort of Penkethman. Edward Henry had hoped to avoid this interview.

He shrugged his shoulders in answer to his wife's remark.

"Well," he said, "where are the kids?"

"Waiting in the lounge with Nurse, as you said to be." Her mien

delicately informed him that while in London his caprices would be her

law, which she would obey without seeking to comprehend.

"Well," he went on, "I expect they'd like the parks as well as anything.

Suppose we take 'em and show 'em one of the parks? Shall we? Besides,

they must have fresh air."

"All right," Nellie agreed. "But how far will it be?"

"Oh," said Edward Henry, "we'll crowd into a taxi!"

They crowded into a taxi, and the children found their father in high

spirits. Maisie mentioned the doll. In a minute the taxi had stopped

in front of a toy-shop surpassing dreams, and they invaded the toy-shop

like an army. When they emerged, after a considerable interval, Nurse

was carrying an enormous doll, and Nellie was carrying Maisie, and Ralph

was lovingly stroking the doll's real shoes. Robert kept a profound

silence--a silence which had begun in the train.

"You haven't got much to say, Robert," his father remarked when the taxi

set off again.

"I know," said Robert gruffly. Among other things, he resented his best

clothes on a week-day.

"What do you think of London?"

"I don't know," said Robert.

His eyes never left the window of the taxi.

Then they visited the theatre--a very fatiguing enterprise, and also,

for Edward Henry, a very nervous one. He was as awkward in displaying

that inchoate theatre as a newly-made father with his first-born. Pride

and shame fought for dominion over him. Nellie was full of laudations.

Ralph enjoyed the ladders.

"I say," said Nellie, apprehensive for Maisie, on the pavement, "this

child's exhausted already. How big's this park of yours? Because

neither Nurse nor I can carry her very far."

"We'll buy a pram," said Edward Henry. He was staring at a newspaper

placard which said: "Isabel Joy on the war-path again. Will she win?"

"But--"

"Oh, yes, we'll buy a pram! Driver--"

"A pram isn't enough. You'll want coverings for her, in this wind."

"Well, we'll buy the necessary number of eiderdowns and blankets, then,"

said Edward Henry. "Driver--"

A tremendous business! For, in addition to making the purchases, he had

to feed his flock in an A-B-C shop, where among the unoccupied

waitresses Maisie and her talkative winking doll enjoyed a triumph.

Still, there was plenty of time.

At a quarter-past twelve he was displaying the varied landscape beauties

of the park to his family. Ralph insisted on going to the bridge over

the lake, and Robert silently backed him. And therefore the entire

party went. But Maisie was afraid of the water, and cried. Now, the

worst thing about Maisie was that when once she had begun to cry it was

very difficult to stop her. Even the most remarkable dolls were

powerless to appease her distress.

"Give me the confounded pram, Nurse," said Edward Henry, "I'll cure

her."

But he did not cure her. However, he had to stick grimly to the

perambulator. Nellie tripped primly in black silk on one side of it.

Nurse had the wayward Ralph by the hand. And Robert, taciturn, stalked

alone, adding up London and making a very small total of it.

Suddenly Edward Henry halted the perambulator and, stepping away from

it, raised his hat. An excessively elegant young woman leading a

Pekinese by a silver chain stopped as if smitten by a magic dart and

held spellbound.

"How do you do, Miss April?" said Edward Henry loudly. "I was hoping to

meet you. This is my wife. Nellie, this is Miss April." Nellie bowed

stiffly in her black silk. Naught of the fresh maiden about her now!

And it has to be said that Elsie April, in all her young and radiant

splendour and woman-of-the-worldliness, was equally stiff. "And there

are my two boys. And this is my little girl in the pram."

Maisie screamed, and pushed an expensive doll out of the perambulator.

Edward Henry saved it by its boot as it fell.

"And this is her doll. And this is Nurse," he finished. "Fine breezy

morning, isn't it?"

In due course the processions moved on.

"Well, that's done!" Edward Henry muttered to himself, and sighed.

CHAPTER IX

THE FIRST NIGHT

I.

It was upon an evening in June--and a fine evening, full of the

exquisite melancholy of summer in a city--that Edward Henry stood before

a window, drumming thereon as he had once, a less experienced man with

hair slightly less gray, drummed on the table of the mighty and arrogant

Slosson. The window was the window of the managerial room of the Regent

Theatre. And he could scarcely believe it, he could scarcely believe

that he was not in a dream, for the room was papered, carpeted and

otherwise furnished. Only its electric light fittings were somewhat

hasty and provisional, and the white ceiling showed a hole and a bunch

of wires, like the nerves of a hollow tooth, whence one of Edward

Henry's favourite chandeliers would ultimately depend.

The whole of the theatre was at least as far advanced toward completion

as that room. A great deal of it was more advanced; for instance the

auditorium, foyer, and bars, which were utterly finished, so far as

anything ever is finished in a changing world. Wonders, marvels, and

miracles had been accomplished. Mr. Alloyd, in the stress of the job,

had even ceased to bring the Russian ballet into his conversations. Mr.

Alloyd, despite a growing tendency to prove to Edward Henry by authentic

anecdote about midnight his general proposition that women as a sex

treated him with shameful unfairness, had gained the high esteem of

Edward Henry as an architect. He had fulfilled his word about those

properties of the auditorium which had to do with hearing and

seeing--in-so-much that the auditorium was indeed unique in London. And

he had taken care that the clerk of the Works took care that the builder

did not give up heart in the race with time.

Moreover he had maintained the peace with the terrible London County

Council, all of whose inspecting departments seemed to have secretly

decided that the Regent Theatre should be opened, not in June as Edward

Henry had decided but at some vague future date toward the middle of the

century. Months earlier Edward Henry had ordained and announced that

the Regent Theatre should be inaugurated on a given date in June, at the

full height of splendour of the London season, and he had astounded the

theatrical world by adhering through thick and thin to that date, and

had thereby intensified his reputation as an eccentric; for the oldest

inhabitant of that world could not recall a case in which the opening of

a new theatre had not been promised for at least three widely different

dates.

Edward Henry had now arrived at the eve of the date, and if he had

arrived there in comparative safety, with a reasonable prospect of

avoiding complete shame and disaster, he felt and he admitted that the

credit was due as much to Mr. Alloyd as to himself. Which only

confirmed an early impression of his that architects were queer

people--rather like artists and poets in some ways, but with a basis of

bricks and mortar to them.

His own share in the enterprise of the Regent had in theory been

confined to engaging the right people for the right tasks and

situations; and to signing checks. He had depended chiefly upon Mr.

Marrier, who, growing more radiant every day, had gradually developed

into a sort of chubby Napoleon, taking an immense delight in detail and

in choosing minor hands at round-sum salaries on the spur of the moment.

Mr. Marrier refused no call upon his energy. He was helping Carlo Trent

in the production and stage-management of the play. He dried the tears

of girlish neophytes at rehearsals. He helped to number the stalls. He

showed a passionate interest in the tessellated pavement of the

entrance. He taught the managerial typewriting girl how to make

afternoon tea. He went to Hitchin to find a mediaeval chair required

for the third act, and found it. In a word he was fully equal to the

post of acting manager. He managed! He managed everything and

everybody except Edward Henry, and except the press-agent, a functionary

whose conviction of his own indispensability and importance was so

sincere that even Marrier shared it, and left him alone in his

Bismarckian operations. The press-agent, who sang in musical comedy

chorus at night, knew that if the Regent Theatre succeeded, it would be

his doing and his alone.

And yet Edward Henry, though he had delegated everything, had yet found

a vast amount of work to do; and was thereby exhausted. That was why he

was drumming on the pane. That was why he was conscious of a foolish

desire to shove his fist through the pane. During the afternoon he had

had two scenes with two representatives of the Libraries (so called

because they deal in theatre-tickets and not in books) who had declined

to take up any of his tickets in advance. He had commenced an action

against a firm of bill posters. He had settled an incipient strike in

the "limes" department, originated by Mr. Cosmo Clark's views about

lighting. He had dictated answers to seventy-nine letters of complaint

from unknown people concerning the supply of free seats for the first

night. He had responded in the negative to a request from a newspaper

critic who, on the score that he was deaf, wanted a copy of the play.

He had replied finally to an official of the County Council about the

smoke trap over the stage. He had replied finally to another official of

the County Council about the electric sign. He had attended to a new

curiosity on the part of another official of the County Council about

the iron curtain. And he had been almost rude to still another official

of the County Council about the wiring of the electric light in the

dressing-rooms. He had been unmistakably and pleasurably rude in

writing to Slossons about their criticisms of the lock on the door of

Lord Woldo's private entrance to the theatre. Also he had arranged with

the representative of the Chief Commissioner of Police concerning the

carriage regulations for "setting-down and taking-up."

And he had indeed had more than enough. His nerves, though he did not

know it, and would have scorned the imputation, were slowly giving way.

Hence, really, the danger to the pane! Through the pane, in the dying

light he could see a cross-section of Shaftesbury Avenue, and an aged

newspaper lad leaning against a lamp-post and displaying a poster which

spoke of Isabel Joy. Isabel Joy yet again! That little fact of itself

contributed to his exasperation. He thought, considering the importance

of the Regent Theatre and the salary he was paying to his press-agent,

that the newspapers ought to occupy their pages solely with the

metropolitan affairs of Edward Henry Machin. But the wretched Isabel

had, as it were, got London by the throat. She had reached Chicago from

the West, on her triumphant way home, and had there contrived to be

arrested, according to boast, but she was experiencing much more

difficulty in emerging from the Chicago prison than in entering it. And

the question was now becoming acute whether the emissary of the militant

Suffragettes would arrive back in London within the specified period of

a hundred days. Naturally, London was holding its breath. London will

keep calm during moderate crises--such as a national strike or the agony

of the House of Lords--but when the supreme excitation is achieved

London knows how to let itself go.

"If you please, Mr. Machin--"

He turned. It was his typewriter, Miss Lindop, a young girl of some

thirty-five years, holding a tea-tray.

"But I've had my tea once!" he snapped.

"But you've not had your dinner, sir, and it's half-past eight!" she

pleaded.

He had known this girl for less than a month and he paid her fewer

shillings a week than the years of her age, and yet somehow she had

assumed a worshipping charge of him, based on the idea that he was

incapable of taking care of himself. To look at her appealing eyes one

might have thought that she would have died to insure his welfare.

"And they want to see you about the linoleum for the gallery stairs,"

she added timidly. "The County Council man says it must be taken up."

The linoleum for the gallery stairs! Something snapped in him. He

almost walked right through the young woman and the tea-tray.

"I'll linoleum them!" he bitterly exclaimed, and disappeared.

II.

Having duly "linoleumed them," or rather having very annoyingly quite

failed to "linoleum them," Edward Henry continued his way up the

right-hand gallery staircase and reached the auditorium, where to his

astonishment a good deal of electricity, at one penny three farthings a

unit, was blazing. Every seat in the narrow and high-pitched gallery,

where at the sides the knees of one spectator would be on a level with

the picture-hat of the spectator in the row beneath, had a perfect and

entire view of the proscenium opening. And Edward Henry now proved this

unprecedented fact by climbing to the topmost corner seat and therefrom

surveying the scene of which he was monarch. The boxes were swathed in

their new white dust sheets; and likewise the higgledy-piggledy stalls,

not as yet screwed down to the floor, save three or four stalls in the

middle of the front row, from which the sheet had been removed. On one

of these seats, far off though it was, he could descry a paper

bag,--probably containing sandwiches,--and on another a pair of gloves

and a walking-stick. Several alert ladies with sketchbooks walked

uneasily about in the aisles. The orchestra was hidden in the well

provided for it, and apparently murmuring in its sleep. The magnificent

drop-curtain, designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A., concealed the

stage.

Suddenly Mr. Marrier and Carlo Trent appeared through the iron door that

gave communication--to initiates--between the wings and the auditorium;

they sat down in the stalls. And the curtain rose with a violent swish,

and disclosed the first "set" of "The Orient Pearl."

"What about that amber, Cosmo?" Mr. Marrier cried thickly, after a

pause, his mouth occupied with sandwich.

"There you are!" came the reply.

"Right!" said Mr. Marrier. "Strike!"

"Don't strike!" contradicted Carlo Trent.

"Strike, I tell you! We must get on with the second act." The voices

resounded queerly in the empty theatre.

The stage was invaded by scene shifters before the curtain could descend

again.

Edward Henry heard a tripping step behind him. It was the faithful

typewriting girl.

"I say," he said. "Do you mind telling me what's going on here? It's

true that in the rush of more important business I'd almost forgotten

that a theatre is a place where they perform plays."

"It's the dress-rehearsal, Mr. Machin," said the woman, startled and

apologetic.

"But the dress-rehearsal was fixed for three o'clock," said he. "It

must have been finished three hours ago."

"I think they've only just done the first act," the woman breathed. "I

know they didn't begin till seven. Oh! Mr. Machin, of course it's no

affair of mine, but I've worked in a good many theatres, and I do think

it's such a mistake to have the dress-rehearsal quite private. If you

get a hundred or so people in the stalls, then it's an audience, and

there's much less delay and everything goes much better. But when it's

private a dress-rehearsal is just like any other rehearsal."

"Only more so, perhaps," said Edward Henry, smiling.

He saw that he had made her happy; but he saw also that he had given her

empire over him.

"I've got your tea here," she said, rather like a hospital nurse now.

"Won't you drink it?"

"I'll drink it if it's not stewed," he muttered.

"Oh!" she protested. "Of course it isn't! I poured it off the leaves

into another teapot before I brought it up."

She went behind the barrier, and reappeared balancing a cup of tea with

a slice of sultana cake edged on the saucer. And as she handed it to

him--the sustenance of rehearsals--she gazed at him and he could almost

hear her eyes saying: "You poor thing!"

There was nothing that he hated so much as to be pitied.

"You go home!" he commanded.

"Oh, but--"

"You go home! See?" He paused, threatening. "If you don't clear out on

the tick, I'll chuck this cup and saucer down into the stalls."

Horrified, she vanished.

He sighed his relief.

After some time, the leader of the orchestra climbed into his chair, and

the orchestra began to play, and the curtain went up again, on the

second act of the masterpiece in hexameters. The new scenery, which

Edward Henry had with extraordinary courage insisted on Saracen

Givington substituting for the original incomprehensibilities displayed

at the Azure Society's performance, rather pleased him. Its colouring

was agreeable, and it did resemble something definite. You could,

though perhaps not easily, tell what it was meant to represent. The play

proceeded, and the general effect was surprisingly pleasant to Edward

Henry. And then Rose Euclid as Haidee came on for the great scene of

the act. From the distance of the gallery she looked quite passably

youthful, and beyond question she had a dominating presence in her

resplendent costume. She was incomparably and amazingly better than she

had been at the few previous rehearsals which Edward Henry had been

unfortunate enough to witness. She even reminded him of his earliest

entrancing vision of her.

"Some people may _like_ this!" he admitted, with a gleam of optimism.

Hitherto, for weeks past, he had gone forward with his preparations in

the most frigid and convinced pessimism. It seemed to him that he had

become involved in a vast piece of machinery, and that nothing short of

blowing the theatre up with dynamite would bring the cranks and pistons

to a stop. And yet it seemed to him also that everything was unreal,

that the contracts he signed were unreal, and the proofs he passed, and

the posters he saw on the walls of London, and the advertisements in the

newspapers. Only the checks he drew had the air of being real. And

now, in a magic flash, after a few moments gazing at the stage, he saw

all differently. He scented triumph from afar off, as one sniffs the

tang of the sea. On the morrow he had to meet Nellie at Euston, and he

had shrunk from meeting her, with her terrible remorseless, provincial,

untheatrical common sense; but now, in another magic flash, he envisaged

the meeting with a cock-a-doodle-doo of hope. Strange! He admitted it

was strange.

And then he failed to hear several words spoken by Rose Euclid. And

then a few more. As the emotion of the scene grew, the proportion of

her words audible in the gallery diminished. Until she became, for him,

totally inarticulate, raving away there and struggling in a cocoon of

hexameters.

Despair seized him. His nervous system, every separate nerve of it, was

on the rack once more.

He stood up in a sort of paroxysm and called loudly across the vast

intervening space:

"Speak more distinctly, please."

A fearful silence fell upon the whole theatre. The rehearsal stopped.

The building itself seemed to be staggered. Somebody had actually

demanded that words should be uttered articulately!

Mr. Marrier turned toward the intruder, as one determined to put an end

to such singularities.

"Who's up theyah?"

"I am," said Edward Henry. "And I want it to be clearly understood in

my theatre that the first thing an actor has to do is to make himself

heard. I daresay I'm devilish odd, but that's how I look at it."

"Whom do you mean, Mr. Machin?" asked Marrier in a different tone.

"I mean Miss Euclid of course. Here I've spent Heaven knows how much on

the acoustics of this theatre, and I can't make out a word she says. I

can hear all the others. And this is the dress-rehearsal!"

"You must remember you're in the gallery," said Mr. Marrier firmly.

"And what if I am! I'm not giving gallery seats away to-morrow night.

It's true I'm giving half the stalls away, but the gallery will be paid

for."

Another silence.

Said Rose Euclid sharply, and Edward Henry caught every word with the

most perfect distinctness:

"I'm sick and tired of people saying they can't make out what I say!

They actually write me letters about it! Why _should_ people make out

what I say?"

She quitted the stage.

Another silence....

"Ring down the curtain," said Mr. Marrier in a thrilled voice.

III.

Shortly afterward Mr. Marrier came into the managerial office, lit up

now, where Edward Henry was dictating to his typewriter and hospital

nurse, who, having been caught in hat and jacket on the threshold, had

been brought back and was tapping his words direct on to the machine. It

was a remarkable fact that the sole proprietor of the Regent Theatre was

now in high spirits and good-humour.

"Well, Marrier, my boy," he saluted the acting manager, "how are you

getting on with that rehearsal?"

"Well, sir," said Mr. Marrier, "I'm not getting on with it. Miss Euclid

refuses absolutely to proceed. She's in her dressing-room."

"But why?" enquired Edward Henry with bland surprise. "Doesn't she

_want_ to be heard by her gallery-boys?"

Mr. Marrier showed a feeble smile.

"She hasn't been spoken to like that for thirty years," said he.

"But don't you agree with me?" asked Edward Henry.

"Yes," said Marrier, "I _agree_ with you--"

"And doesn't your friend Carlo want his precious hexameters to be

heard?"

"We baoth agree with you," said Marrier. "The fact is, we've done all we

could, but it's no use. She's splendid; only--" He paused.

"Only you can't make out ten per cent. of what she says," Edward Henry

finished for him. "Well, I've got no use for that in my theatre." He

found a singular pleasure in emphasising the phrase, "my theatre."

"That's all very well," said Marrier. "But what are you going to _do_

about it? I've tried everything. _You've_ come in and burst up the

entire show, if you'll forgive my saying saoh!"