of "The Orient Pearl" at Sir John Pilgrim's. But he withdrew in time.
Suppose that "The Orient Pearl" was the piece to be performed by the
Azure Society! It might well be! It was (in his opinion) just the sort
of play that that sort of society would choose! Nevertheless he was
as anxious as ever to see Elsie April act. He really thought that she
could and would transfigure any play. Even his profound scorn of New
Thought (a subject of which he was entirely ignorant) began to be
modified--and by nothing but the enchantment of the tone in which
Elsie April murmured the words, "Azure Society!"
"How soon is the performance?" he demanded.
"Wednesday week," said she.
"That's the very day of my corner-stone-laying," he said. "However, it
doesn't matter. My little affair will be in the afternoon."
"But it can't be," said she, solemnly. "It would interfere with us,
and we should interfere with it. Our Annual Conference takes place in
the afternoon. All London will be there."
Said Mr. Marrier, rather shamefaced:
"That's just it, Mr. Machin. It positively never occurred to me that
the Azure Conference is to be on that very day. I never thought of it
until nearly four o'clock. And then I scarcely knew how to explain it
to you. I really don't know how it escaped me."
Mr. Marrier's trouble was now out, and he had declined in Edward
Henry's esteem. Mr. Marrier was afraid of him. Mr. Marrier's list
of personages was no longer a miracle of foresight; it was a mere
coincidence. He doubted if Mr. Marrier was worth even his three
pounds a week. Edward Henry began to feel ruthless, Napoleonic. He
was capable of brushing away the whole Azure Society and New Thought
movement into limbo.
"You must please alter your date," said Elsie April. And she put her
right elbow on the table and leaned her chin on it, and thus somehow
established a domestic intimacy for the three amid all the blare and
notoriety of the vast tea-room.
"Oh, but I can't!" he said easily, familiarly. It was her occasional
"artichoke" manner that had justified him in assuming this tone. "I
can't!" he repeated. "I've told Sir John I can't possibly be ready any
earlier, and on the day after he'll almost certainly be on his way to
Marseilles. Besides, I don't _want_ to alter my date. My date is in
the papers by this time."
"You've already done quite enough harm to the Movement as it is," said
Elsie April, stoutly, but ravishingly.
"Me--harm to the Movement?"
"Haven't you stopped the building of our church?"
"Oh! So you know Mr. Wrissell?"
"Very well, indeed."
"Anybody else would have done the same in my place!" Edward Henry
defended himself. "Your cousin, Miss Euclid, would have done it, and
Marrier here was in the affair with her."
"Ah!" exclaimed Elsie April. "But we didn't belong to the Movement
then! We didn't know.... Come now, Mr. Machin. Sir John Pilgrim will
of course be a great draw. But even if you've got him and manage to
stick to him, we should beat you. You'll never get the audience you
want if you don't change from Wednesday week. After all, the number of
people who count in London is very small. And we've got nearly all of
them. You've no idea--"
"I won't change from Wednesday week," said Edward Henry. This defiance
of her put him into an extremely agitated felicity.
"Now, my dear Mr. Machin--"
He was acutely aware of the charm she was exerting, and yet he
discovered that he could easily withstand it.
"Now, my dear Miss April, please don't try to take advantage of your
beauty!"
She sat up. She was apparently measuring herself and him.
"Then you won't change the day, truly?" Her urbanity was in no wise
impaired.
"I won't," he laughed lightly. "I daresay you aren't used to people
like me, Miss April."
(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 taxi-cab, 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 taxi-cab, 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 acutely troubled him.... No, he was not guilty! He insisted in
his heart that he was not guilty! And yet--and yet--No taxi-cab 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 shan't 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 matchboarding 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-monopolizing 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 the 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 that 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 patronizing 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 the 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 fusees 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 tranquillized 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 recognized 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's 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 those 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 to 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 soirée 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 soirée 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 recognized and acknowledged, and the clapping had in no wise
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 cuttle-fish 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 II. or A castle in a forest"; and also, "Scenery and
costumes designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A." The cuttle-fish, 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 realization 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?" someone addressed him
suddenly, when the applause had died down. It was Mr. Alloyd, who had
advanced up the aisle from a 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 recognized by far more people than they
recognize.
"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
daresay I'm old-fashioned." ...
"I daresay," 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 organizing and
management of these precious dramatic soirées? 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. Harrier,
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. Harrier's
features. To judge by those features, Mr. Marrier, in addition to
having organized and managed the soirée, 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.
Elise 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 recognized in the tumult of bodies
was Mr. Rollo Wrissell, whom he had not seen since their meeting at
Slossons.
"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 unobtrusively 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 flashed 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 inquirer,
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 witnessers 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 new-comer, bent with his lamp, lifted
delicately the hem of the new-comer'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 new-comer.
"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,
or 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 organization
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--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
organization.
"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: "Scrumptious!" 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 shan'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 realize 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 pounds apiece 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 soirée 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 an 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 "Tannhäuser" 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 unskilfully 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 those 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 apple-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 upstairs 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 hearthrug, 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
mid-day 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 hearthrug, 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, fahver?"
"Yes."
"You promise, fahver?"
"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 Henry
Edward 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 ageing 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 eider-downs 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 grey, 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 towards
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 towards 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 and 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 dread 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 cheques. 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' departments, 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. But 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 ensure 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 sketch-books 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."