"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 to 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 cheques 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 towards 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 afterwards 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?" inquired Edward Henry with bland surprise. "Doesn't she

_want_ to be heard--by her gallery-boys?"

Mr. Marrier showed an enfeebled 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 emphasizing 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!"

"Do?" exclaimed Edward Henry. "It's perfectly simple. All you have to

do is to act. God bless my soul, aren't you getting fifteen pounds a

week, and aren't you my acting-manager? Act, then! You've done enough

hinting. You've proved that hints are no good. You'd have known that

from your birth up, Marrier, if you'd been born in the Five Towns.

Act, my boy."

"But haow? If she won't go on, she won't."

"Is her understudy in the theatre?"

"Yes. It's Miss Cunningham, you know."

"What salary does she get?"

"Ten pounds a week."

"What for?"

"Well--partly to understudy, I suppose."

"Let her earn it, then. Go on with the rehearsal. And let her play the

part to-morrow night. She'll be delighted, you bet."

"But--"

"Miss Lindop," Edward Henry interrupted, "will you please read to Mr.

Marrier what I've dictated?" He turned to Marrier. "It's an interview

with myself for one of to-morrow's papers."

Miss Lindop, with tears in her voice if not in her eyes, obeyed the

order and, drawing the paper from the machine, read its contents

aloud.

Mr. Marrier started back--not in the figurative but in the literal

sense--as he listened.

"But you'll never send that out!" he exclaimed.

"Why not?"

"No paper will print it!"

"My dear Marrier," said Edward Henry, "don't be a simpleton. You know

as well as I do that half-a-dozen papers will be delighted to print

it. And all the rest will copy the one that does print it. It'll

be the talk of London to-morrow, and Isabel Joy will be absolutely

snuffed out."

"Well," said Mr. Marrier, "I never heard of such a thing!"

"Pity you didn't, then!"

Mr. Marrier moved away.

"I say," he murmured at the door, "don't you think you ought to read

that to Rose first?"

"I'll read it to Rose like a bird," said Edward Henry.

Within two minutes--it was impossible to get from his room to the

dressing-rooms in less--he was knocking at Rose Euclid's door. "Who's

there?" said a voice. He entered and then replied: "I am."

Rose Euclid was smoking a cigarette and scratching the arm of an

easy-chair behind her. Her maid stood near by with a whisky-and-soda.

"Sorry you can't go on with the rehearsal, Miss Euclid," said Edward

Henry very quickly. "However, we must do the best we can. But Mr.

Marrier thought you'd like to hear this. It's part of an interview

with me that's going to appear to-morrow in the press."

Without pausing, he went on to read: "I found Mr. Alderman Machin, the

hero of the Five Towns and the proprietor and initiator of London's

newest and most up-to-date and most intellectual theatre, surrounded

by a complicated apparatus of telephones and typewriters in his

managerial room at the Regent. He received me very courteously. "Yes,"

he said in response to my question, "the rumour is quite true. The

principal part in 'The Orient Pearl' will be played on the first night

by Miss Euclid's understudy, Miss Olga Cunningham, a young woman of

very remarkable talent. No, Miss Euclid is not ill or even indisposed.

But she and I have had a grave difference of opinion. The point

between us was whether Miss Euclid's speeches ought to be clearly

audible in the auditorium. I considered they ought. I may be wrong.

I may be provincial. But that was and is my view. At the

dress-rehearsal, seated in the gallery, I could not hear her lines. I

objected. She refused to consider the objection or to proceed with the

rehearsal. _Hinc illae lachrymae_!" ... "Not at all," said Mr. Machin

in reply to a question, "I have the highest admiration for Miss

Euclid's genius. I should not presume to dictate to her as to her

art. She has had a very long experience of the stage, very long, and

doubtless knows better than I do. Only, the Regent happens to be my

theatre, and I'm responsible for it. Every member of the audience will

have a complete uninterrupted view of the stage, and I intend that

every member of the audience shall hear every word that is uttered on

the stage. I'm odd, I know. But then I've a reputation for oddness

to keep up. And by the way, I'm sure that Miss Cunningham will make a

great reputation for herself."

"Not while I'm here, she won't!" exclaimed Rose Euclid, standing up,

and enunciating her words with marvellous clearness.

Edward Henry glanced at her, and then continued to read: "Suggestions

for headlines. 'Piquant quarrel between manager and star-actress.'

'Unparalleled situation.' 'Trouble at the Regent Theatre.'"

"Mr. Machin," said Rose Euclid, "you are not a gentleman."

"You'd hardly think so, would you?" mused Edward Henry, as if mildly

interested in this new discovery of Miss Euclid's.

"Maria," said the star to her maid, "go and tell Mr. Marrier I'm

coming."

"And I'll go back to the gallery," said Edward Henry. "It's the place

for people like me, isn't it? I daresay I'll tear up this paper later,

Miss Euclid--we'll see."

IV

On the next night a male figure in evening dress and a pale overcoat

might have been seen standing at the corner of Piccadilly Circus and

Lower Regent Street, staring at an electric sign in the shape of

a shield which said, in its glittering, throbbing speech of

incandescence:

THE REGENT

ROSE EUCLID

IN

"THE ORIENT PEARL"

The figure crossed the Circus, and stared at the sign from a new point

of view. Then it passed along Coventry Street, and stared at the sign

from yet another point of view. Then it reached Shaftesbury Avenue

and stared again. Then it returned to its original station. It was the

figure of Edward Henry Machin, savouring the glorious electric sign of

which he had dreamed. He lit a cigarette, and thought of Seven Sachs

gazing at the name of Seven Sachs in fire on the façade of a Broadway

Theatre in New York. Was not this London phenomenon at least as fine?

He considered it was. The Regent Theatre existed--there it stood!

(What a name for a theatre!) Its windows were all illuminated. Its

entrance-lamps bathed the pavement in light, and in this radiance

stood the commissionaires in their military pride and their new

uniforms. A line of waiting automobiles began a couple of yards to the

north of the main doors and continued round all sorts of dark corners

and up all manner of back streets towards Golden Square itself.

Marrier had had the automobiles counted and had told him the number,

but such was Edward Henry's condition that he had forgotten. A row of

boards reared on the pavement against the walls of the façade said:

"Stalls Full," "Private Boxes Full," "Dress Circle Full," "Upper

Circle Full," "Pit Full," "Gallery Full." And attached to the ironwork

of the glazed entrance canopy was a long board which gave the same

information in terser form: "House Full." The Regent had indeed been

obliged to refuse quite a lot of money on its opening night. After

all, the inauguration of a new theatre was something, even in London!

Important personages had actually begged the privilege of buying seats

at normal prices, and had been refused. Unimportant personages--such

as those whose boast in the universe was that they had never missed

a first night in the West End for twenty, thirty, or even fifty

years--had tried to buy seats at abnormal prices, and had failed:

which was in itself a tragedy. Edward Henry at the final moment had

yielded his wife's stall to the instances of a Minister of the Crown,

and at Lady Woldo's urgent request had put her into Lady Woldo's

private landowner's-box, where also was Miss Elsie April, who "had

already had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Machin." Edward Henry's first

night was an event of magnitude. And he alone was responsible for it.

His volition alone had brought into being that grand edifice whose

light yellow walls now gleamed in nocturnal mystery under the shimmer

of countless electric bulbs.

"There goes pretty nigh forty thousand pounds of my money!" he

reflected excitedly.

And he reflected:

"After all, I'm somebody."

Then he glanced down Lower Regent Street and saw Sir John Pilgrim's

much larger theatre, now sub-let to a tenant who was also lavish with

displays of radiance. And he reflected that on first nights Sir John

Pilgrim, in addition to doing all that he himself had done, would hold

the great _rôle_ on the stage throughout the evening. And he admired

the astounding, dazzling energy of such a being, and admitted

ungrudgingly:

"He's somebody too! I wonder what part of the world he's illuminating

just now!"

Edward Henry did not deny to his soul that he was extremely nervous.

He would not and could not face even the bare possibility that the

first play presented at the new theatre might be a failure. He had

meant to witness the production incognito among the crowd in the pit

or in the gallery. But, after visiting the pit a few moments before

the curtain went up, he had been appalled by the hard-hearted levity

of the pit's remarks on things in general. The pit did not seem to

be in any way chastened or softened by the fact that a fortune, that

reputations, that careers were at stake. He had fled from the packed

pit. (As for the gallery, he decided that he had already had enough of

the gallery.) He had wandered about corridors, and to and fro in his

own room and in the wings, and even in the basement, as nervous as a

lost cat or an author, and as self-conscious as a criminal who knows

himself to be on the edge of discovery. It was a fact that he could

not look people in the eyes. The reception of the first act had been

fairly amiable, and he had suffered horribly as he listened for the

applause. Catching sight of Carlo Trent in the distance of a passage,

he had positively run away from Carlo Trent. The first _entr'acte_

had seemed to last for about three months. Its nightmarish length had

driven him almost to lunacy. The "feel" of the second act--so far

as it mystically communicated itself to him in his place of

concealment--had been better. And at the second fall of the curtain

the applause had been enthusiastic. Yes, enthusiastic! Curiously, it

was the revulsion caused by this new birth of hope that, while the

third act was being played, had driven him out of the theatre. His

wild hope needed ozone. His breast had to expand in the boundless

prairie of Piccadilly Circus. His legs had to walk. His arms had to

swing.

Now he crossed the Circus again to his own pavement and gazed like

a stranger at his own posters. On several of them, encircled in a

scarlet ring, was the sole name of Rose Euclid--impressive! (And

smaller, but above it, the legend, "E.H. Machin, Sole Proprietor.")

He asked himself impartially, as his eyes uneasily left the poster

and slipped round the Circus--deserted save by a few sinister and

idle figures at that hour--"Should I have sent that interview to the

papers, or shouldn't I?... I wonder. I expect some folks would say

that on the whole I've been rather hard on Rose since I first met

her!... Anyhow, she's speaking up all right to-night!" He laughed

shortly.

A newsboy floated up from the Circus bearing a poster with the name of

Isabel Joy on it in large letters.

He thought:

"Be blowed to Isabel Joy!"

He did not care a fig for Isabel Joy's competition now.

And then a small door opened in the wall close by, and an elegant

cloaked woman came out on to the pavement. The door was the private

door leading to the private box of Lord Woldo, owner of the ground

upon which the Regent Theatre was built. The woman he recognized with

confusion as Elsie April, whom he had not seen alone since the Azure

Society's night.

"What are you doing out here, Mr. Machin?" she greeted him with

pleasant composure.

"I'm thinking," said he.

"It's going splendidly," she remarked. "Really!... I'm just running

round to the stage-door to meet dear Rose as she comes off. What a

delightful woman your wife is! So pretty, and so sensible!"

She disappeared round the corner before he could compose a suitable

husband's reply to this laudation of a wife.

Then the commissionaires at the entrance seemed to start into life.

And then suddenly several preoccupied men strode rapidly out of the

theatre, buttoning their coats, and vanished phantom-like....

Critics, on their way to destruction!

The performance must be finishing. Hastily he followed in the

direction taken by Elsie April.

V

He was in the wings, on the prompt side. Close by stood the prompter,

an untidy youth with imperfections of teeth, clutching hard at the

red-scored manuscript of "The Orient Pearl." Sundry players, of

varying stellar degrees, were posed around in the opulent costumes

designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A. Miss Lindop was in the

background, ecstatically happy, her cheeks a race-course of tears.

Afar off, in the centre of the stage, alone, stood Rose Euclid,

gorgeous in green and silver, bowing and bowing and bowing--bowing

before the storm of approval and acclamation that swept from the

auditorium across the footlights. With a sound like that of tearing

silk, or of a gigantic contralto mosquito, the curtain swished down,

and swished up, and swished down again. Bouquets flew on to the stage

from the auditorium (a custom newly imported from the United States

by Miss Euclid, and encouraged by her, though contrary to the lofty

canons of London taste). The actress already held one huge trophy,

shaped as a crown, to her breast. She hesitated, and then ran to the

wings, and caught Edward Henry by the wrist impulsively, madly. They

shook hands in an ecstasy.

It was as though they recognized in one another a fundamental and

glorious worth; it was as though no words could ever express the depth

of appreciation, affection and admiration which each intensely

felt for the other; it was as though this moment were the final

consecration of twin-lives whose long, loyal comradeship had never

been clouded by the faintest breath of mutual suspicion. Rose Euclid

was still the unparalleled star, the image of grace and beauty and

dominance upon the stage. And yet quite clearly Edward Henry saw close

to his the wrinkled, damaged, daubed face and thin neck of an old

woman; and it made no difference.

"Rose!" cried a strained voice, and Rose Euclid wrenched herself from

him and tumbled with half a sob into the clasping arms of Elsie April.

"You've saved the intellectual theatah for London, my boy! That's what

you've done!" Marrier now was gripping his hand. And Edward Henry was

convinced that he had.

The strident vigour of the applause showed no diminution. And through

the thick, heavy rain of it could be heard the monotonous, insistent

detonations of one syllable:

"'Thor! 'Thor! 'Thor! 'Thor! 'Thor!"

And then another syllable was added:

"Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!"

Mechanically Edward Henry lit a cigarette. He had no consciousness of

doing so.

"Where is Trent?" people were asking.

Carlo Trent appeared up a staircase at the back of the stage.

"You've got to go on," said Marrier. "Now, pull yourself together. The

Great Beast is calling for you. Say a few wahds."

Carlo Trent in his turn seized the hand of Edward Henry, and it

was for all the world as though he were seizing the hand of an

intellectual and poetic equal, and wrung it.

"Come now!" Mr. Marrier, beaming, admonished him, and then pushed.

"What must I say?" stammered Carlo.

"Whatever comes into your head."

"All right! I'll say something."

A man in a dirty white apron drew back the heavy mass of the curtain

about eighteen inches, and Carlo Trent stepping forward, the glare

of the footlights suddenly lit his white face. The applause, now

multiplied fivefold and become deafening, seemed to beat him back

against the curtain. His lips worked. He did not bow.

"Cam back, you fool!" whispered Marrier.

And Carlo Trent stepped back into safe shelter.

"Why didn't you say something?"

"I c-couldn't," murmured weakly the greatest dramatic poet in the

world, and began to cry.

"Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!"

"Here!" said Edward Henry, gruffly. "Get out of my way! I'll settle

'em! Get out of my way!" And he riddled Carlo Trent with a fusillade

of savagely scornful glances.

The man in the apron obediently drew back the curtain again, and the

next second Edward Henry was facing an auditorium crowded with his

patrons. Everybody was standing up, chiefly in the aisles and crowded

at the entrances, and quite half the people were waving, and quite a

quarter of them were shouting. He bowed several times. An age elapsed.

His ears were stunned. But it seemed to him that his brain was working

with marvellous perfection. He perceived that he had been utterly

wrong about "The Orient Pearl." And that all his advisers had been

splendidly right. He had failed to catch its charm and to feel its

power. But this audience--this magnificent representative audience

drawn from London in the brilliant height of the season--had not

failed.

It occurred to him to raise his hand. And as he raised his hand it

occurred to him that his hand held a lighted cigarette. A magic hush

fell upon the magnificent audience, which owned all that endless line

of automobiles outside. Edward Henry, in the hush, took a pull at his

cigarette.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, pitching his voice well--for

municipal politics had made him a practised public speaker, "I

congratulate you. This evening you--have succeeded!"

There was a roar, confused, mirthful, humorously protesting. He

distinctly heard a man in the front row of the stalls say: "Well, for

sheer nerve--!" And then go off into a peal of laughter.

He smiled and retired.

Marrier took charge of him.

"You merit the entire confectioner's shop!" exclaimed Marrier, aghast,

admiring, triumphant.

Now Edward Henry had had no intention of meriting cake. He had merely

followed in speech the secret train of his thought. But he saw that

he had treated a West End audience as a West End audience had never

before been treated, and that his audacity had conquered. Hence he

determined not to refuse the cake.

"Didn't I tell you I'd settle 'em?" said he.

The band played "God Save the King."

VI

One hour later, in the double-bedded chamber at the Majestic, as his

wife lay in bed and he was methodically folding up a creased white tie

and inspecting his chin in the mirror, he felt that he was touching

again, after an immeasurable interval, the rock-bottom of reality.

Nellie, even when he could only see her face--and that in a

mirror!--was the most real phenomenon in his existence, and she

possessed the strange faculty of dispelling all unreality round about

her.

"Well," he said, "how did you get on in the box?"

"Oh!" she replied, "I got on very well with the Woldo woman. She's one

of our sort. But I'm not _so_ set up with your Elsie April."

"Dash this collar!"

Nellie continued:

"And I can tell you another thing, I don't envy Mr. Rollo Wrissell."

"What's Wrissell got to do with it?"

"She means to marry him."

"Elsie April means to marry Wrissell?"

"He was in and out of the box all night. It was as plain as a

pikestaff."

"What's amiss with my Elsie April?" Edward Henry demanded.

"She's a thought too _pleasant_ for my taste," answered Nellie.

Astonishing, how pleasantness is regarded with suspicion in the Five

Towns, even by women who can at a pinch be angels!

VII

Often during the brief night he gazed sleepily at the vague next bed

and mused upon the extraordinariness of women's consciences. His wife

slept like an innocent. She always did. It was as though she gently

expired every evening and returned gloriously to life every morning.

The sunshiny hours between three and seven were very long to him, but

it was indisputable that he did not hear the clock strike six: which

was at any rate proof of a little sleep to the good. At five minutes

past seven he thought he heard a faint rustling noise in the corridor,

and he arose and tiptoed to the door and opened it. Yes, the Majestic

had its good qualities! He had ordered that all the London morning

daily papers should be laid at his door as early as possible--and

there the pile was, somewhat damp, and as fresh as fruit, with a

slight odour of ink. He took it in.

His heart was beating as he climbed back into bed with it and arranged

pillows so that he could sit up, and unfolded the first paper. Nellie

had not stirred.

Once again he was disappointed in the prominence given by the powerful

London press to his London enterprise. In the first newspaper, a

very important one, he positively could not find any criticism of the

Regent's first night. There was nearly a page of the offensive Isabel

Joy, who was now appealing, through the newspapers, to the President

of the United States. Isabel had been christened the World-Circler,

and the special correspondents of the entire earth were gathered about

her carpeted cell. Hope still remained that she would reach London

within the hundred days. An unknown adherent of the cause for which

she suffered had promised to give ten thousand pounds to that cause

if she did so. Further, she was receiving over sixty proposals of

marriage a day. And so on and so on! Most of this he gathered in an

instant from the headlines alone. Nauseating! Another annoying item in

the paper was a column and a half given to the foundation-stone-laying

of the First New Thought Church, in Dean Street, Soho--about a couple

of hundred yards from its original site. He hated the First New

Thought Church as one always hates that to which one has done an

injury.

Then he found what he was searching for: "Regent Theatre. Production

of poetical drama at London's latest playhouse." After all, it was

well situated in the paper, on quite an important page, and there was

over a column of it. But in his nervous excitation his eyes had missed

it. His eyes now read it. Over half of it was given up to a discussion

of the Don Juan legend and the significance of the Byronic character

of Haidee--obviously written before the performance. A description

of the plot occupied most of the rest, and a reference to the acting

ended it. "Miss Rose Euclid, in the trying and occasionally beautiful

part of Haidee, was all that her admirers could have wished." ...

"Miss Cunningham distinguished herself by her diction and bearing in

the small part of the Messenger." The final words were, "The reception

was quite favourable."

"Quite favourable" indeed! Edward Henry had a chill. Good heavens, was

not the reception ecstatically, madly, foolishly enthusiastic? "Why!"

he exclaimed within, "I never saw such a reception!" It was true, but

then he had never seen any other first night. He was shocked, as well

as chilled. And for this reason: for weeks past all the newspapers, in

their dramatic gossip, had contained highly sympathetic references to

his enterprise. According to the paragraphs, he was a wondrous

man, and the theatre was a wondrous house, the best of all possible

theatres, and Carlo Trent was a great writer, and Rose Euclid exactly

as marvellous as she had been a quarter of a century before, and the

prospects of the intellectual-poetic drama in London so favourable

as to amount to a certainty of success. In those columns of dramatic

gossip there was no flaw in the theatrical world. In those columns

of dramatic gossip no piece ever failed, though sometimes a piece was

withdrawn, regretfully and against the wishes of the public, to make

room for another piece. In those columns of dramatic gossip theatrical

managers, actors, and especially actresses, and even authors, were

benefactors of society, and therefore they were treated with the

deference, the gentleness, the heartfelt sympathy which benefactors of

society merit and ought to receive.

The tone of the criticism of the first night was different--it was

subtly, not crudely, different. But different it was.

The next newspaper said the play was bad and the audience indulgent.

It was very severe on Carlo Trent, and very kind to the players,

whom it regarded as good men and women in adversity--with particular

laudations for Miss Rose Euclid and the Messenger. The next newspaper

said the play was a masterpiece--and would be so hailed in any country

but England. England, however--! Unfortunately this was a newspaper

whose political opinions Edward Henry despised. The next newspaper

praised everything and everybody, and called the reception

tumultuously enthusiastic. And Edward Henry felt as though somebody,

mistaking his face for a slice of toast, had spread butter all over

it. Even the paper's parting assurance that the future of the higher

drama in London was now safe beyond question did not remove this

delusion of butter.

The two following newspapers were more sketchy or descriptive, and

referred at some length to Edward Henry's own speech, with a kind of

sub-hint that Edward Henry had better mind what he was about. Three

illustrated papers and photographs of scenes and figures, but nothing

important in the matter of criticism. The rest were "neither one

thing nor the other," as they say in the Five Towns. On the whole,

an inscrutable press, a disconcerting, a startling, an

appetite-destroying, but not a hopeless press!

The general impression which he gathered from his perusals was that

the author was a pretentious dullard, an absolute criminal, a genius;

that the actors and actresses were all splendid and worked hard,

though conceivably one or two of them had been set impossible

tasks--to wit, tasks unsuited to their personalities; that he himself

was a Napoleon, a temerarious individual, an incomprehensible fellow;

and that the future of the intellectual-poetic drama in London was

not a topic of burning actuality.... He remembered sadly the

superlative-laden descriptions, in those same newspapers, of the

theatre itself, a week or two back, the unique theatre in which the

occupant of every seat had a complete and uninterrupted view of the

whole of the proscenium opening. Surely that fact alone ought to have

ensured proper treatment for him!

Then Nellie woke up and saw the scattered newspapers.

"Well," she asked, "what do they say?"

"Oh!" he replied lightly, with a laugh. "Just about what you'd

expect. Of course you know what a first-night audience always is. Too

generous. And ours was, particularly. Miss April saw to that. She

had the Azure Society behind her, and she was determined to help Rose

Euclid. However, I should say it was all right--I should say it was

quite all right. I told you it was a gamble, you know."

When Nellie, dressing, said that she considered she ought to go back

home that day, he offered no objection. Indeed he rather wanted her

to go. Not that he had a desire to spend the whole of his time at the

theatre, unhampered by provincial women in London. On the contrary, he

was aware of a most definite desire not to go to the theatre. He lay

in bed and watched with careless curiosity the rapid processes of

Nellie's toilette. He had his breakfast on the dressing-table (for he

was not at Wilkins's, neither at the Grand Babylon). Then he helped

her to pack, and finally he accompanied her to Euston, where she

kissed him with affectionate common sense and caught the twelve five.

He was relieved that nobody from the Five Towns happened to be going

down by that train.

As he turned away from the moving carriage the evening papers had just

arrived at the bookstalls. He bought the four chief organs--one green,

one yellowish, one white, one pink--and scanned them self-consciously

on the platform. The white organ had a good heading: "Re-birth of the

intellectual drama in London. What a provincial has done. Opinions of

leading men." Two columns altogether! There was, however, little in

the two columns. The leading men had practised a sagacious caution.

They, like the press as a whole, were obviously waiting to see which

way the great elephantine public would jump. When the enormous animal

had jumped they would all exclaim: "What did I tell you?" The other

critiques were colourless. At the end of the green critique occurred

the following sentence: "It is only fair to state, nevertheless,

that the play was favourably received by an apparently enthusiastic

audience."

"Nevertheless!" ... "Apparently!"

Edward Henry turned the page to the theatrical advertisements.

"REGENT THEATRE. (Twenty yards from Piccadilly Circus.) 'The

Orient Pearl,' by Carlo Trent. Miss ROSE EUCLID. Every evening

at 8.30. Matinées every Wednesday and Saturday at 2.30.

Box-office open 10 to 10. Sole Proprietor--E.H. Machin."

Unreal! Fantastic! Was this he, Edward Henry? Could it be his mother's

son?

Still--"Matinées every Wednesday and Saturday." "_Every_ Wednesday and

Saturday." That word implied and necessitated a long run--anyhow a run

extending over months. That word comforted him. Though he knew as well

as you do that Mr. Marrier had composed the advertisement, and that he

himself was paying for it, it comforted him. He was just like a child.

VIII

"I say, Cunningham's made a hit!" Mr. Marrier almost shouted at him as

he entered the managerial room at the Regent.

"Cunningham? Who's Cunningham?"

Then he remembered. She was the girl who played the Messenger. She had

only three words to say, and to say them over and over again; and she

had made a hit!

"Seen the notices?" asked Marrier.

"Yes. What of them?"

"Oh! Well!" Marrier drawled. "What would you expect?"

"That's just what _I_ said!" observed Edward Henry.

"You did, did you?" Mr. Marrier exclaimed, as if extremely interested

by this corroboration of his views.

Carlo Trent strolled in; he remarked that he happened to be just

passing. But discussion of the situation was not carried very far.

That evening the house was nearly full, except the pit and the

gallery, which were nearly empty. Applause was perfunctory.

"How much?" Edward Henry inquired of the box-office manager when

figures were added together.

"Thirty-one pounds, two shillings."

"Hem!"

"Of course," said Mr. Marrier, "in the height of the London season,

with so many counter-attractions--! Besides, they've got to get used

to the idea of it."

Edward Henry did not turn pale. Still, he was aware that it cost him

a trifle over sixty pounds "to ring the curtain up" at every

performance--and this sum took no account of expenses of production

nor of author's fees. The sum would have been higher, but he was

calculating as rent of the theatre only the ground-rent plus six per

cent on the total price of the building.

What disgusted him was the duplicity of the first-night audience, and

he said to himself violently, "I was right all the time, and I knew I

was right! Idiots! Chumps! Of course I was right!"

On the third night the house held twenty-seven pounds and sixpence.

"Naturally," said Mr. Marrier, "in this hot weathah! I never knew such

a hot June! It's the open-air places that are doing us in the eye. In

fact I heard to-day that the White City is packed. They simply can't

bank their money quick enough."

It was on that day that Edward Henry paid salaries. It appeared to him

that he was providing half London with a livelihood: acting-managers,

stage-managers, assistant ditto, property men, stage-hands,

electricians, prompters, call-boys, box-office staff, general

staff, dressers, commissionaires, programme-girls, cleaners, actors,

actresses, understudies, to say nothing of Rose Euclid at a purely

nominal salary of a hundred pounds a week. The tenants of the bars

were grumbling, but happily he was getting money from them.

The following day was Saturday. It rained--a succession of

thunderstorms. The morning and the evening performances produced

together sixty-eight pounds.

"Well," said Mr. Marrier, "in this kind of weathah you can't expect

people to come out, can you? Besides, this cursed week-ending habit--"

Which conclusions did not materially modify the harsh fact that Edward

Henry was losing over thirty pounds a day--or at the rate of over ten

thousand pounds a year.

He spent Sunday between his hotel and his club, chiefly in reiterating

to himself that Monday began a new week and that something would have

to occur on Monday.

Something did occur.

Carlo Trent lounged into the office early. The man was for ever being

drawn to the theatre as by an invisible but powerful elastic cord. The

papers had a worse attack than ever of Isabel Joy, for she had been

convicted of transgression in a Chicago court of law, but a tremendous

lawyer from St. Louis had loomed over Chicago and, having examined the

documents in the case, was hopeful of getting the conviction quashed.

He had discovered that in one and the same document "Isabel" had been

spelt "Isobel" and--worse--Illinois had been deprived by a careless

clerk of one of its "l's." He was sure that by proving these grave

irregularities in American justice he could win an appeal.

Edward Henry glanced up suddenly from the newspaper. He had been

inspired.

"I say, Trent," he remarked, without any warning or preparation,

"you're not looking at all well. I want a change myself. I've a good

mind to take you for a sea-voyage."

"Oh!" grumbled Trent. "I can't afford sea-voyages."

"_I_ can!" said Edward Henry. "And I shouldn't dream of letting it

cost you a penny. I'm not a philanthropist. But I know as well

as anybody that it will pay us theatrical managers to keep you in

health."

"You're not going to take the play off?" Trent demanded suspiciously.

"Certainly not!" said Edward Henry.

"What sort of a sea-voyage?"

"Well--what price the Atlantic? Been to New York?... Neither have I!

Let's go. Just for the trip. It'll do us good."

"You don't mean it?" murmured the greatest dramatic poet, who had

never voyaged further than the Isle of Wight. His eyeglass swung to

and fro.

Edward Henry feigned to resent this remark.

"Of course I mean it. Do you take me for a blooming gas-bag?" He rose.

"Marrier!" Then more loudly: "Marrier!" Mr. Marrier entered. "Do you

know anything about the sailings to New York?"

"Rather!" said Mr. Marrier, beaming. After all, he was a most precious

aid.

"We may be able to arrange for a production in New York," said Edward

Henry to Carlo, mysteriously.

Mr. Marrier gazed at one and then at the other, puzzled.

CHAPTER X

ISABEL

I

Throughout the voyage of the _Lithuania_ from Liverpool to New York,

Edward Henry, in common with some two thousand other people on board,

had the sensation of being hurried. He who in a cab rides late to

an important appointment, arrives with muscles fatigued by mentally

aiding the horse to move the vehicle along. Thus were Edward Henry's

muscles fatigued, and the muscles of many others; but just as much

more so as the _Lithuania_ was bigger than a cab.

For the _Lithuania_, having been seriously delayed in Liverpool by men

who were most ridiculously striking for the fantastic remuneration of

one pound a week, was engaged on the business of making new records.

And every passenger was personally determined that she should therein

succeed. And, despite very bad June weather towards the end, she did

sail past the Battery on a grand Monday morning with a new record to

her credit.

So far Edward Henry's plan was not miscarrying. But he had a very

great deal to do, and very little time in which to do it, and whereas

the muscles of the other passengers were relaxed as the ship drew to

her berth, Edward Henry's muscles were only more tensely tightened.

He had expected to see Mr. Seven Sachs on the quay, for in response to

his telegram from Queenstown the illustrious actor-author had sent him

an agreeable wireless message in full Atlantic; the which had inspired

Edward Henry to obtain news by Marconi both from London and New York,

at much expense; from the east he had had daily information of the

dwindling receipts at the Regent Theatre, and from the west daily

information concerning Isabel Joy. He had not, however, expected Mr.

Seven Sachs to walk into the _Lithuania's_ music-saloon an hour before

the ship touched the quay. Nevertheless, this was what Mr. Seven

Sachs did, by the exercise of those mysterious powers wielded by the

influential in democratic communities.

"And what are you doing here?" Mr. Seven Sachs greeted Edward Henry

with geniality.

Edward Henry lowered his voice.

"I'm throwing good money after bad," said he.

The friendly grip of Mr. Seven Sachs's hand did him good, reassured

him, and gave him courage. He was utterly tired of the voyage, and

also of the poetical society of Carlo Trent, whose passage had cost

him thirty pounds, considerable boredom, and some sick-nursing during

the final days and nights. A dramatic poet with an appetite was a full

dose for Edward Henry; but a dramatic poet who lay on his back and

moaned for naught but soda-water and dry land amounted to more than

Edward Henry could conveniently swallow.

He directed Mr. Sachs's attention to the anguished and debile organism

which had once been Carlo Trent, and Mr. Sachs was so sympathetic

that Carlo Trent began to adore him, and Edward Henry to be somewhat

disturbed in his previous estimate of Mr. Sachs's common sense. But at

a favourable moment Mr. Sachs breathed humorously into Edward Henry's

ear the question:

"What have you brought _him_ out for?"

"I've brought him out to lose him."

As they pushed through the bustle of the enormous ship, and descended

from the dizzy eminence of her boat-deck by lifts and ladders down

to the level of the windy, sun-steeped rock of New York, Edward Henry

said:

"Now, I want you to understand, Mr. Sachs, that I haven't a minute to

spare. I've just looked in for lunch."

"Going on to Chicago?"

"She isn't at Chicago, is she?" demanded Edward Henry, aghast. "I

thought she'd reached New York!"

"Who?"

"Isabel Joy."

"Oh! Isabel's in New York, sure enough. She's right here. They say

she'll have to catch the _Lithuania_ if she's going to get away with

it."

"Get away with what?"

"Well--the goods."

The precious word reminded Edward Henry of an evening at Wilkins's and

raised his spirits even higher. It was a word he loved.

"And I've got to catch the _Lithuania_, too!" said he. "But Trent

doesn't know!... And let me tell you she's going to do the quickest

turn-round that any ship ever did. The purser assured me she'll leave

at noon to-morrow unless the world comes to an end in the meantime.

Now what about a hotel?"

"You'll stay with me--naturally."

"But--" Edward Henry protested.

"Oh, yes, you will. I shall be delighted."

"But I must look after Trent."

"He'll stay with me too--naturally. I live at the Stuyvesant Hotel,

you know, on Fifth. I've a pretty private suite there. I shall arrange

a little supper for to-night. My automobile is here."

"Is it possible that I once saved your life and have forgotten all

about it?" Edward Henry exclaimed. "Or do you treat everybody like

this?"

"We like to look after our friends," said Mr. Sachs, simply.

In the terrific confusion of the quay, where groups of passengers

were mounted like watch-dogs over hillocks of baggage, Mr. Sachs stood

continually between the travellers and the administrative rigour and

official incredulity of a proud republic. And in the minimum of time

the fine trunk of Edward Henry and the modest packages of the poet

were on the roof of Mr. Sachs's vast car. The three men were inside,

and the car was leaping, somewhat in the manner of a motor-boat at

full speed, over the cobbles of a wide mediaeval street.

"Quick!" thought Edward Henry. "I haven't a minute to lose!"

His prayer reached the chauffeur. Conversation was difficult; Carlo

Trent groaned. Presently they rolled less perilously upon asphalt,

though the equipage still lurched. Edward Henry was for ever bending

his head towards the window aperture in order to glimpse the roofs of

the buildings, and never seeing the roofs.

"Now we're on Fifth," said Mr. Sachs, after a fearful lurch, with

pride.

Vistas of flags, high cornices, crowded pavements, marble, jewellery

behind glass--the whole seen through a roaring phantasmagoria of

competing and menacing vehicles!

And Edward Henry thought:

"This is my sort of place!"

The jolting recommenced. Carlo Trent rebounded limply, groaning

between cushions and upholstery. Edward Henry tried to pretend that he

was not frightened. Then there was a shock as of the concussion of

two equally unyielding natures. A pane of glass in Mr. Seven Sachs's

limousine flew to fragments and the car stopped.

"I expect that's a spring gone!" observed Mr. Sachs with tranquillity.

"Will happen, you know, sometimes!"

Everybody got out. Mr. Sachs's presumption was correct. One of the

back wheels had failed to leap over a hole in Fifth Avenue some

eighteen inches deep and two feet long.

"What is that hole?" asked Edward Henry.

"Well," said Mr. Sachs, "it's just a hole. We'd better transfer to a

taxi." He gave calm orders to his chauffeur.

Four empty taxis passed down the sunny magnificence of Fifth Avenue

and ignored Mr. Sachs's urgent waving. The fifth stopped. The baggage

was strapped and tied to it: which process occupied much time. Edward

Henry, fuming against delay, gazed around. A nonchalant policeman on

a superb horse occupied the middle of the road. Tram-cars passed

constantly across the street in front of his caracoling horse,

dividing a route for themselves in the wild ocean of traffic as Moses

cut into the Red Sea. At intervals a knot of persons, intimidated and

yet daring, would essay the voyage from one pavement to the opposite

pavement; there was no half-way refuge for these adventurers, as in

decrepit London; some apparently arrived; others seemed to disappear

for ever in the feverish welter of confused motion and were never

heard of again. The policeman, easily accommodating himself to the

caracolings of his mount, gazed absently at Edward Henry, and Edward

Henry gazed first at the policeman, and then at the high decorated

grandeur of the buildings, and then at the Assyrian taxi into which

Mr. Sachs was now ingeniously inserting Carlo Trent. He thought:

"No mistake--this street is alive. But what cemeteries they must

have!"

He followed Carlo, with minute precautions, into the interior of

the taxi. And then came the supremely delicate operation--that of

introducing a third person into the same vehicle. It was accomplished;

three chins and six knees fraternized in close intimacy; but the door

would not shut. Wheezing, snorting, shaking, complaining, the taxi

drew slowly away from Mr. Sachs's luxurious automobile and left it

forlorn to its chauffeur. Mr. Sachs imperturbably smiled. ("I have two

other automobiles," said Mr. Sachs.) In some sixty seconds the taxi

stopped in front of the tremendous glass awning of the Stuyvesant. The

baggage was unstrapped; the passengers were extracted one by one from

the cell, and Edward Henry saw Mr. Sachs give two separate dollar

bills to the driver.

"By Jove!" he murmured.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Sachs, politely.

"Nothing!" said Edward Henry.

They walked into the hotel, and passed through a long succession of

corridors and vast public rooms surging with well-dressed men and

women.

"What's all this crowd for?" asked Edward Henry.

"What crowd?" asked Mr. Sachs, surprised.

Edward Henry saw that he had blundered.

"I prefer the upper floors," remarked Mr. Sachs as they were being

flung upwards in a gilded elevator, and passing rapidly all numbers

from 1 to 14.

The elevator made an end of Carlo Trent's manhood. He collapsed. Mr.

Sachs regarded him, and then said:

"I think I'll get an extra room for Mr. Trent. He ought to go to bed."

Edward Henry enthusiastically concurred.

"And stay there!" said Edward Henry.

Pale Carlo Trent permitted himself to be put to bed. But, therein, he

proved fractious. He was anxious about his linen. Mr. Sachs telephoned

from the bedside, and a laundry-maid came. He was anxious about his

best lounge-suit. Mr. Sachs telephoned, and a valet came. Then he

wanted a siphon of soda-water, and Mr. Sachs telephoned, and a waiter

came. Then it was a newspaper he required. Mr. Sachs telephoned and

a page came. All these functionaries, together with two reporters,

peopled Mr. Trent's bedroom more or less simultaneously. It was Edward

Henry's bright notion to add to them a doctor--a doctor whom Mr. Sachs

knew, a doctor who would perceive at once that bed was the only proper

place for Carlo Trent.

"Now," said Edward Henry, when he and Mr. Sachs were participating in

a private lunch amid the splendours and the grim, silent service of

the latter's suite at the Stuyvesant, "I have fully grasped the fact

that I am in New York. It is one o'clock and after, and as soon as

ever this meal is over I have just _got_ to find Isabel Joy. You must

understand that on this trip New York for me is merely a town where

Isabel Joy happens to be."

"Well," replied Mr. Sachs, "I reckon I can put you on to that. _She's

going to be photographed at two o'clock by Rentoul Smiles_. I happen

to know because Rent's a particular friend of mine."

"A photographer, you say?"

Mr. Sachs controlled himself. "Do you mean to say you've not heard

of Rentoul Smiles?... Well, he's called 'Man's photographer.' He has

never photographed a woman! Won't! At least, wouldn't! But he's going

to photograph Isabel. So you may guess that he considers Isabel _some_

woman, eh?"

"And how will that help me?" inquired Edward Henry.

"Why! I'll take you up to Rent's," Mr. Sachs comforted him. "It's

close by--corner of Thirty-ninth and Five."

"Tell me," Edward Henry demanded, with immense relief, "she hasn't got

herself arrested yet, has she?"

"No. And she won't!"

"Why not?"

"The police have been put wise," said Mr. Sachs.

"Put wise?"

"Yes. _Put wise_!"

"I see," said Edward Henry.

But he did not see. He only half saw.

"As a matter of fact," said Mr. Sachs, "Isabel can't get away with the

goods unless she fixes the police to lock her up for a few hours. And

she'll not succeed in that. Her hundred days are up in London next

Sunday. So there'll be no time for her to be arrested and bailed out

either at Liverpool or Fishguard. And that's her only chance. I've

seen Isabel, and if you ask me my opinion she's down and out."

"Never mind!" said Edward Henry with glee.

"I guess what you're after her for," said Mr. Seven Sachs, with an air

of deep knowledge.

"The deuce you do!"

"Yes, sir! And let me tell you that dozens of 'em have been after her

already. But she wouldn't! Nothing would tempt her."

"Never mind!" Edward Henry smiled.

II

When Edward Henry stood by the side of Mr. Sachs in a doorway half

shielded by a _portière_, and gazed unseen into the great studio of

Mr. Rentoul Smiles, he comprehended that he was indeed under powerful

protection in New York. At the entrance on Fifth Avenue he and Sachs

had passed through a small crowd of assorted men, chiefly young, whom

Sachs had greeted in the mass with the smiling words, "Well, boys!"

Other men were within. Still another went up with them in the

elevator, but no further. They were reporters of the entire world's

press, to each of whom Isabel Joy had been specially "assigned." They

were waiting; they would wait.

Mr. Rentoul Smiles having been warned by telephone of the visit of his

beloved friend, Seven Sachs, Mr. Sachs and his English _protége_ had

been received at Smiles's outer door by a clerk who knew exactly what

to do with them, and did it.

"Is she here?" Mr. Sachs had murmured.

"Yep," the clerk had negligently replied.

And now Edward Henry beheld the objective of his pilgrimage, her whose

personality, portrait and adventures had been filling the newspapers

of two hemispheres for three weeks past. She was not realistically

like her portraits. She was a little, thin, pale, obviously nervous

woman, of any age from thirty-five to fifty, with fair untidy hair,

and pale grey-blue eyes that showed the dreamer, the idealist and

the harsh fanatic. She looked as though a moderate breeze would have

overthrown her, but she also looked, to the enlightened observer, as

though she would recoil before no cruelty and no suffering in pursuit

of her vision. The blind dreaming force behind her apparent frailty

would strike terror into the heart of any man intelligent enough to

understand it. Edward Henry had an inward shudder. "Great Scott!" he

reflected. "I shouldn't like to be ill and have Isabel for a nurse!"

And his mind at once flew to Nellie, and then to Elsie April. "And

so she's going to marry Wrissell!" he reflected, and could scarcely

believe it.

Then he violently wrenched his mind back to the immediate

objective. He wondered why Isabel Joy should wear a bowler hat and a

mustard-coloured jacket that resembled a sporting man's overcoat; and

why these garments suited her. With a whip in her hand she could have

sat for a jockey. And yet she was a woman, and very feminine, and

probably old enough to be Elsie April's mother! A disconcerting world,

he thought.

The "man's photographer," as he was described in copper on Fifth

Avenue and in gold on his own doors, was a big, loosely-articulated

male, who loured over the trifle Isabel like a cloud over a sheep in a

great field. Edward Henry could only see his broad bending back as he

posed in athletic attitudes behind the camera.

Suddenly Rentoul Smiles dashed to a switch, and Isabel's wistful face

was transformed into that of a drowned corpse, into a dreadful harmony

of greens and purples.

"Now," said Rentoul Smiles, in a deep voice that was like a rich

unguent, "we'll try again. We'll just play around that spot. Look into

my eyes. Not _at_ my eyes, my dear woman, _into_ them! Just a little

more challenge--a little more! That's it. Don't wink, for the land's

sake! Now."

He seized a bulb at the end of a tube and slowly squeezed--squeezed

it tragically and remorselessly, twisting himself as if suffering in

sympathy with the bulb, and then in a wide, sweeping gesture he flung

the bulb on to the top of the camera and ejaculated:

"Ha!"

Edward Henry thought:

"I would give ten pounds to see Rentoul Smiles photograph Sir John

Pilgrim." But the next instant the forgotten sensation of hurry was

upon him once more. Quick, quick, Rentoul Smiles! Edward Henry's

scorching desire was to get done and leave New York.

"Now, Miss Isabel," Mr. Smiles proceeded, exasperatingly deliberate,

"d'you know, I feel kind of guilty? I have got a little farm out in

Westchester County and I'm making a little English pathway up the

garden with a gate at the end. I woke up this morning and began to

think about the quaint English form of that gate, and just how I would

have it." He raised a finger. "But I ought to have been thinking

about you. I ought to have been saying to myself, 'To-day I have to

photograph Isabel Joy,' and trying to understand in meditation the

secrets of your personality. I'm sorry! Now, don't talk. Keep like

that. Move your head round. Go on! Go on! Move it. Don't be afraid.

This place belongs to you. It's yours. Whatever you do, we've got

people here who'll straighten up after you.... D'you know why I've

made money? I've made money so that I can take _you_ this afternoon,

and tell a two-hundred-dollar client to go to the deuce. That's

why I've made money. Put your back against the chair, like an

Englishwoman. That's it. No, don't _talk_, I tell you. Now look

joyful, hang it! Look joyful.... No, no! Joy isn't a contortion. It's

something right deep down. There, there!"

The lubricant voice rolled on while Rentoul Smiles manipulated the

camera. He clasped the bulb again and again threw it dramatically

away.

"I'm through!" he said. "Don't expect anything very grand,

Miss Isabel. What I've been trying to do this afternoon is my

interpretation of you as I've studied your personality in your

speeches. If I believed wholly in your cause, or if I wholly

disbelieved in it, my work would not have been good. Any value that

it has will be due to the sympathetic impartiality of my spiritual

attitude. Although"--he menaced her with the licensed familiarity of a

philosopher--"although, lady, I must say that I felt you were working

against me all the time.... This way!"

(Edward Henry, recalling the comparative simplicity of the London

photographer at Wilkins's, thought: "How profoundly they understand

photography in America!")

Isabel Joy rose and glanced at the watch in her bracelet, then

followed the direction of the male hand and vanished.

Rentoul Smiles turned instantly to the other doorway.

"How do, Rent?" said Seven Sachs, coming forward.

"How do, Seven?" Mr. Rentoul Smiles winked.

"This is my good friend, Alderman Machin, the theatre-manager from

London."

"Glad to meet you, sir."

"She's not gone, has she?" asked Sachs, hurriedly.

"No, my housekeeper wanted to talk to her. Come along."

And in the waiting-room, full of permanent examples of the results of

Mr. Rentoul Smiles's spiritual attitude towards his fellow-men, Edward

Henry was presented to Isabel Joy. The next instant the two men and

the housekeeper had unobtrusively retired, and he was alone with his

objective. In truth, Seven Sachs was a notable organizer.

III

She was sitting down in a cosy-corner, her feet on a footstool, and

she seemed a negligible physical quantity as he stood in front of her.

This was she who had worsted the entire judicial and police system of

Chicago, who spoke pentecostal tongues, who had circled the globe,

and held enthralled--so journalists computed--more than a quarter of

a million of the inhabitants of Marseilles, Athens, Port Said, Candy,

Calcutta, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Hawaii, San Francisco, Salt Lake

City, Denver, Chicago, and lastly, New York! This was she!

"I understand we're going home on the same ship!" he was saying.

She looked up at him, almost appealingly.

"You won't see anything of me, though," she said.

"Why not?"

"Tell me," said she, not answering his question, "what do they say

of me, really, in England? I don't mean the newspapers. For instance,

well--the Azure Society. Do you know it?"

He nodded.

"Tell me," she repeated.

He related the episode of the telegram at the private first

performance of "The Orient Pearl."

She burst out in a torrent of irrelevant protest:

"The New York police have not treated me right. It would have cost

them nothing to arrest me and let me go. But they wouldn't. Every man

in the force--you hear me, every man--has had strict orders to leave

me unmolested. It seems they resent my dealings with the police in

Chicago, where I brought about the dismissal of four officers, so they

say. And so I'm to be boycotted in this manner! Is that argument, Mr.

Machin? Tell me. You're a man, but honestly, is it argument? Why, it's

just as mean and despicable as brute force."

"I agree with you," said Edward Henry, softly.

"Do they really think it will harm the militant cause? Do they

_really_ think so? No, it will only harm me. I made a mistake in

tactics. I trusted--fool!--to the chivalry of the United States. I

might have been arrested in a dozen cities, but I on purpose reserved

my last two arrests for Chicago and New York, for the sake of the

superior advertisement, you see! I never dreamt--! Now it's too late.

I am defeated! I shall just arrive in London on the hundredth day. I

shall have made speeches at all the meetings. But I shall be short of

one arrest. And the ten thousand pounds will be lost to the cause. The

militants here--such as they are--are as disgusted as I am. But they

scorn me. And are they not right? Are they not right? There should be

no quarter for the vanquished."

"Miss Joy," said Edward Henry, "I've come over from London specially

to see you. I want to make up the loss of that ten thousand pounds as

far as I can. I'll explain at once. I'm running a poetical play of

the highest merit, called 'The Orient Pearl,' at my new theatre in

Piccadilly Circus. If you will undertake a small part in it--a part

of three words only--I'll pay you a record salary, sixty-six pounds

thirteen and four-pence a word--two hundred pounds a week!"

Isabel Joy jumped up.

"Are you another of them, then?" she muttered. "I did think from the

look of you that you would know a gentlewoman when you met one!

Did you imagine for the thousandth part of one second that I would

stoop--"

"Stoop!" exclaimed Edward Henry. "My theatre is not a music-hall--"

"You want to make it into one!" she stopped him.

"Good day to you," she said. "I must face those journalists again, I

suppose. Well, even they--! I came alone in order to avoid them. But

it was hopeless. Besides, is it my duty to avoid them--after all?"

It was while passing through the door that she uttered the last words.

"Where is she?" Seven Sachs inquired, entering.

"Fled!" said Edward Henry.

"Everything all right?"

"Quite!"

Mr. Rentoul Smiles came in.

"Mr. Smiles," said Edward Henry, "did you ever photograph Sir John

Pilgrim?"

"I did, on his last visit to New York. Here you are!"

He pointed to his rendering of Sir John.

"What did you think of him?"

"A great actor, but a mountebank, sir."

During the remainder of the afternoon Edward Henry saw the whole of

New York, with bits of the Bronx and Yonkers in the distance, from

Seven Sachs's second automobile. In his third automobile he went to

the theatre and saw Seven Sachs act to a house of over two thousand

dollars. And lastly he attended a supper and made a speech. But he

insisted upon passing the remainder of the night on the _Lithuania_.

In the morning Isabel Joy came on board early and irrevocably

disappeared into her berth. And from that moment Edward Henry spent

the whole secret force of his individuality in fervently desiring the

_Lithuania_ to start. At two o'clock, two hours late, she did start.

Edward Henry's farewells to the admirable and hospitable Mr. Sachs

were somewhat absent-minded, for already his heart was in London. But

he had sufficient presence of mind to make certain final arrangements.

"Keep him at least a week," said Edward Henry to Seven Sachs, "and I

shall be your debtor for ever and ever."

He meant Carlo Trent, still bedridden.

As from the receding ship he gazed in abstraction at the gigantic

inconvenient word--common to three languages--which is the first

thing seen by the arriving, and the last thing seen by the departing,

visitor, he meditated:

"The dearness of living in the United States has certainly been

exaggerated."

For his total expenses, beyond the confines of the quay, amounted

to one cent, disbursed to buy an evening paper which had contained a

brief interview with himself concerning the future of the intellectual

drama in England. He had told the pressman that "The Orient Pearl"

would run a hundred nights. Save for putting "The Orient Girl" instead

of "The Orient Pearl," and two hundred nights instead of one hundred

nights, this interview was tolerably accurate.

IV

Two entire interminable days of the voyage elapsed before Edward Henry

was clever enough to encounter Isabel Joy--the most notorious and the

least visible person in the ship. He remembered that she had said:

"You won't see anything of me." It was easy to ascertain the number

of her state-room--a double-berth which she shared with nobody. But it

was less easy to find out whether she ever left it, and if so, at what

time of day. He could not mount guard in the long corridor; and

the stewardesses on the _Lithuania_ were mature, experienced and

uncommunicative women, their sole weakness being an occasional

tendency to imagine that they, and not the captain, were in supreme

charge of the steamer. However, Edward Henry did at last achieve his

desire. And on the third morning, at a little before six o'clock, he

met a muffled Isabel Joy on the D deck. The D deck was wet,

having just been swabbed; and a boat--chosen for that dawn's

boat-drill--ascended past them on its way from sea-level to the dizzy

boat-deck above; on the other side of an iron barrier, large crowds

of early-rising third-class passengers were standing and talking and

staring at the oblong slit of sea which was the only prospect offered

by the D deck; it was the first time that Edward Henry aboard had

set eyes on a steerage passenger; with all the conceit natural to the

occupant of a costly state-room, he had unconsciously assumed that he

and his like had sole possession of the ship.

Isabel responded to his greeting in a very natural way. The sharp

freshness of the summer morning at sea had its tonic effect on both of

them; and as for Edward Henry, he lunged and plunged at once into the

subject which alone preoccupied and exasperated him. She did not seem

to resent it.

"You'd have the satisfaction of helping on a thing that all your

friends say ought to be helped," he argued. "Nobody but you can do it.

Without you there'll be a frost. You would make a lot of money, which

you could spend in helping on things of your own. And surely it isn't

the publicity that you're afraid of!"

"No," she agreed. "I'm not afraid of publicity." Her pale grey-blue

eyes shone as they regarded the secret dream that for her hung always

unseen in the air. And she had a strange, wistful, fragile, feminine

mien in her mannish costume.

"Well then--"

"But can't you see it's humiliating?" cried she, as if interested in

the argument.

"It's not humiliating to do something that you can do well--I know you

can do it well--and get a large salary for it, and make the success of

a big enterprise by it. If you knew the play--"

"I do know the play," she said. "We'd lots of us read it in manuscript

long ago."

Edward Henry was somewhat dashed by this information.

"Well, what do you think of it?"

"I think it's just splendid!" said she with enthusiasm.

"And will it be any worse a play because you act a small part in it?"

"No," she said shortly.

"I expect you think it's a play that people ought to go and see, don't

you?"

"I do, Mr. Socrates," she admitted.

He wondered what she could mean, but continued:

"What does it matter what it is that brings the audience into the

theatre, so long as they get there and have to listen?"

She sighed.

"It's no use discussing with you," she murmured. "You're too simple

for this world. I daresay you're honest enough--in fact, I think you

are--but there are so many things that you don't understand. You're

evidently incapable of understanding them."

"Thanks!" he replied, and paused to recover his self-possession. "But

let's get right down to business now. If you'll appear in this play

I'll not merely give you two hundred pounds a week, but I'll explain

to you how to get arrested and still arrive in triumph in London

before midnight on Sunday."

She recoiled a step and raised her eyes.

"How?" she demanded, as with a pistol.

"Ah!" he said. "That's just it. How? Will you promise?"

"I've thought of everything," she said musingly. "If the last day was

any day but Sunday I could get arrested on landing and get bailed

out and still be in London before night. But on Sunday--no--! So you

needn't talk like that."

"Still," he said, "it can be done."

"How?" she demanded again.

"Will you sign a contract with me if I tell you?... Think of what your

reception in London will be if you win after all! Just think!"

Those pale eyes gleamed; for Isabel Joy had tasted the noisy flattery

of sympathetic and of adverse crowds, and her being hungered for it

again; the desire of it had become part of her nature.

She walked away, her hands in the pockets of her ulster, and returned.

"What is your scheme?"

"You'll sign?"

"Yes, if it works."

"I can trust you?"

The little woman of forty or so blazed up. "You can refrain from

insulting me by doubting my word," said she.

"Sorry! Sorry!" he apologized.

V

That same evening, in the colossal many-tabled dining-saloon of the

_Lithuania_ Edward Henry sat as usual to the left of the purser's

empty chair, at the purser's table, where were about a dozen other

men. A page brought him a marconigram. He opened it and read the

single word "Nineteen." It was the amount of the previous evening's

receipts at the Regent, in pounds. He was now losing something like

forty pounds a night--without counting the expenses of the present

excursion. The band began to play as the soup was served, and the ship

rolled politely, gently, but nevertheless unmistakably, accomplishing

one complete roll to about sixteen bars of the music. Then the entire

saloon was suddenly excited. Isabel Joy had entered. She was in the

gallery, near the orchestra, at a small table alone. Everybody became

aware of the fact in an instant, and scores of necks on the lower

floor were twisted to glimpse the celebrity on the upper. It was

remarked that she wore a magnificent evening-dress.

One subject of conversation now occupied all the tables. And it was

fully occupying the purser's table when the purser, generally a little

late, owing to the arduousness of his situation on the ship, entered

and sat down. Now the purser was a northerner, from Durham, a

delightful companion in his lighter moods, but dour, and with a high

conception of authority and of the intelligence of dogs. He would

relate that when he and his wife wanted to keep a secret from their

Yorkshire terrier they had to spell the crucial words in talk, for

the dog understood their every sentence. The purser's views about

the cause represented by Isabel Joy were absolutely clear. None

could mistake them, and the few clauses which he curtly added to the

discussion rather damped the discussion, and there was a pause.

"What should you do, Mr. Purser," said Edward Henry, "if she began to

play any of her tricks here?"

"If she began to play any of her tricks in this ship," answered the

purser, putting his hands on his stout knees, "we should know what to

do?"

"Of course you can arrest?"

"Most decidedly. I could tell you things--" The purser stopped, for

experience had taught him to be very discreet with passengers until he

had voyaged with them at least ten times. He concluded: "The captain

is the representative of English law on an English ship."

And then, in the silence created by the resting orchestra, all in the

saloon could hear a clear, piercing woman's voice, oratorical at first

and then quickening:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to talk to you to-night on the subject

of the injustice of men to women." Isabel Joy was on her feet and

leaning over the gallery rail. As she proceeded a startled hush

changed to uproar. And in the uproar could be caught now and then a

detached phrase, such as "For example, this man-governed ship."

Possibly it was just this phrase that roused the northerner in the

purser. He rose and looked towards the captain's table. But the

captain was not dining in the saloon that evening. Then he strode to

the centre of the saloon, beneath the renowned dome which has been so

often photographed for the illustrated papers, and sought to destroy

Isabel Joy with a single marine glance. Having failed, he called out

loudly:

"Be quiet, madam. Resume your seat."

Isabel Joy stopped for a second, gave him a glance far more homicidal

than his own, and resumed her discourse.

"Steward," cried the purser, "take that woman out of the saloon."

The whole complement of first-class passengers was now standing

up, and many of them saw a plate descend from on high and graze

the purser's shoulder. With the celebrity of a sprinter the man

of authority from Durham disappeared from the ground-floor and was

immediately seen in the gallery. Accounts differed, afterwards, as to

the exact order of events; but it is certain that the leader of the

band lost his fiddle, which was broken by the lusty Isabel on the

purser's head. It was known later that Isabel, though not exactly in

irons, was under arrest in her state-room.

"She really ought to have thought of that for herself, if she's as

smart as she thinks she is," said Edward Henry, privately.

VI

Though he was on the way to high success his anxieties and solicitudes

seemed to increase every hour. Immediately after Isabel Joy's arrest

he became more than ever a crony of the Marconi operator, and began

to dispatch vivid and urgent telegrams to London, without counting the

cost. On the next day he began to receive replies. (It was the most

interesting voyage that the Marconi operator had had since the sinking

of the _Catherine of Siena_, in which episode his promptness through

the air had certainly saved two hundred lives.) Edward Henry could

scarcely sleep, so intense was his longing for Sunday night--his

desire to be safe in London with Isabel Joy! Nay, he could not

properly eat! And then the doubt entered his mind whether after all he

would get to London on Sunday night. For the _Lithuania_ was lagging.

She might have been doing it on purpose to ruin him. Every day, in the

auction-pool on the ship's run, it was the holder of the lower field

that pocketed the money of his fellow-men. The _Lithuania_ actually

descended below five hundred and forty knots in the twenty-four hours.

And no authoritative explanation of this behaviour was ever given.

Upon leaving New York there had been talk of reaching Fishguard on

Saturday evening. But now the prophesied moment of arrival had been

put forward to noon on Sunday. Edward Henry's sole consolation was

that each day on the eastward trip consisted of only twenty-three

hours.

Further, he was by no means free from apprehension about the personal

liberty of Isabel Joy. Isabel had exceeded the programme arranged

between them. It had been no part of his scheme that she should cast

plates, nor even break violins on the shining crown of an august

purser. The purser was angry, and he had the captain, a milder man,

behind him. When Isabel Joy threatened a hunger-strike if she was not

immediately released, the purser signified that she might proceed with

her hunger-strike; he well knew that it would be impossible for her to

expire of inanition before the arrival at Fishguard.

The case was serious, because Isabel Joy had created a precedent.

Policemen and Cabinet Ministers had for many months been regarded

as the lawful prey of militants, but Isabel Joy was the first of the

militants to damage property and heads which belonged to persons

of neither of those classes. And the authorities of the ship were

assuredly inclined to hand Isabel Joy over to the police at Fishguard.

What saved the situation for Edward Henry was the factor which saves

most situations--namely, public opinion. When the saloon clearly

realized that Isabel Joy had done what she had done with the pure

and innocent aim of winning a wager, all that was Anglo-Saxon in the

saloon ranged itself on the side of true sport, and the matter was

lifted above mere politics. A subscription was inaugurated to buy

a new fiddle, and to pay for shattered crockery. And the amount

collected would have purchased, after settling for the crockery,

a couple of dozen new fiddles. The unneeded balance was given to

Seamen's Orphanages. The purser was approached. The captain was

implored. Influence was brought to bear. In short, the wheels that are

within wheels went duly round. And Miss Isabel Joy, after apologies

and promises, was unconditionally released.

But she had been arrested.

And then early on Sunday morning the ship met a storm that had a sad

influence on divine service; a storm of the eminence that scares even

the brass-buttoned occupants of liners' bridges. The rumour went round

the ship that the captain would not call at Fishguard in such weather.

Edward Henry was ready to yield up his spirit in this fearful crisis,

which endured two hours. The captain did call at Fishguard, in pouring

rain, and men came aboard selling Sunday newspapers that were full

of Isabel's arrest on the steamer, and of the nearing triumph of her

arrival in London before midnight. And newspaper correspondents also

came aboard, and all the way on the tender, and in the sheds, and

in the train, Edward Henry and Isabel Joy were subjected to the

journalistic experiments of hardy interviewers. The train arrived at

Paddington at 9 P.M. Isabel had won by three hours. The station was

a surging throng of open-mouthed curiosities. Edward Henry would not

lose sight of his priceless charge, but he sent Harrier to despatch a

telegram to Nellie, whose wifely interest in his movements he had till

then either forgotten or ignored.

And even now his mind was not free. He saw in front of him still

twenty-four hours of anguish.

VII

The next night, just before the curtain went up, he stood on the stage

of the Regent Theatre, and it is a fact that he was trembling--not

with fear but with simple excitement.

Through what a day he had passed! There had been the rehearsal in the

morning; it had gone off very well, save that Rose Euclid had behaved

impossibly, and that the Cunningham girl, the hit of the piece but

ousted from her part, had filled the place with just lamentations and

recriminations.

And then had followed the appalling scene with Rose Euclid. Rose,

leaving the theatre for lunch, had beheld workmen removing her name

from the electric sign and substituting that of Isabel Joy! She was

a woman and an artist, and it would have been the same had she been a

man and an artist. She would not submit to this inconceivable affront.

She had resigned her _rôle_. She had ripped her contract to bits and

flung the bits to the breeze. Upon the whole Edward Henry had been

glad. He had sent for Miss Cunningham, who was Rose's understudy,

had given her her instructions, called another rehearsal for the

afternoon, and effected a saving of nearly half Isabel Joy's fantastic

salary. Then he had entered into financial negotiations with four

evening papers and managed to buy, at a price, their contents-bills

for the day. So that all the West End was filled with men and boys

wearing like aprons posters which bore the words: "Isabel Joy to

appear at the Regent to-night." A great and an original stroke!

And now he gazed through the peep-hole of the curtain upon a crammed

and half-delirious auditorium. The assistant stage-manager ordered him

off. The curtain went up on the drama in hexameters. He waited in the

wings, and spoke soothingly to Isabel Joy, who, looking juvenile in

the airy costume of the Messenger, stood flutteringly agog for her

cue.... He heard the thunderous crashing roar that met her entrance.

He did not hear her line. He walked forth to the glazed balcony at

the front of the house, where in the _entr'actes_ dandies smoked

cigarettes baptized with girlish names. He could see Piccadilly

Circus, and he saw Piccadilly Circus thronged with a multitude of

loafers who were happy in the mere spectacle of Isabel Joy's name

glowing on an electric sign. He went back at last to the managerial

room. Marrier was there, hero-worshipping.

"Got the figures yet?" he asked.

Marrier beamed.

"Two hundred and sixty pounds. As long as it keeps up it means a

profit of getting on for two hundred a naight!"

"But, dash it, man, the house only holds two hundred and thirty."

"But my good sir," said Marrier, "they're paying ten shillings a piece

to stand up in the dress-circle."

Edward Henry dropped into a chair at the desk. A telegram was lying

there, addressed to himself.

"What's this?" he demanded.

"Just cam."

He opened it and read:

* * * * *

"I absolutely forbid this monstrous outrage on a work of art.--TRENT."

* * * * *

"Bit late in the day, isn't he?" said Edward Henry, showing the

telegram to Marrier.

"Besides," Marrier observed, "he'll come round when he knows what his

royalties are."

"Well," said Edward Henry, "I'm going to bed." And he gave a

devastating yawn.

VIII

One afternoon Edward Henry sat in the king of all the easy-chairs in

the drawing-room of his house in Trafalgar Road, Bursley. Although

the month was September, and the weather warm even for September,

a swansdown quilt lay spread upon his knees. His face was pale--his

hands were paler; but his eye was clear and his visage enlightened.

His beard had grown to nearly its original dimensions. On a chair

by his side were a number of letters to which he had just dictated

answers. At a neighbouring table a young clerk was using a typewriter.

Stretched at full length on the sofa was Robert Machin, engaged in the

perusal of the second edition of that day's _Signal_. Of late Robert,

having exhausted nearly all available books, had been cultivating

during his holidays an interest in journalism, and he would give great

accounts, in the nursery, of events happening in each day's instalment

of the _Signal's_ sensational serial. His heels kicked idly one

against the other.

A powerful voice resounded in the lobby, and Dr Stirling entered the

room with Nellie.

"Well, doc.!" Edward Henry greeted him.

"So you're in full blast again!" observed the doctor, using a metaphor

invented by the population of a district where the roar of furnaces

wakens the night.

"No!" Edward Henry protested, as an invalid always will. "I'm only

just keeping an eye on one or two pressing things."

"Of course he's in full blast!" said Nellie with calm conviction.

"What's this I hear about ye ganging away to the seaside, Saturday?"

asked the doctor.

"Well, can't I?" said Edward Henry.

"Ye can," said the doctor. "Let's have a look at ye, man."

"What was it you said I've had?" Edward Henry questioned.

"Colitis."

"Yes, that's the word. I thought I couldn't have got it wrong. Well,

you should have seen my mother's face when I told her what you called

it. She said, 'He may call it that if he's a mind to, but we had

another name for it in my time.' You should have heard her sniff!...

Look here, doc., do you know you've had me down now for pretty near

three months?"

"Nay," said Stirling, "it's yer own obstinacy that's had ye down, man.

If ye'd listened to yer London doctor at first, mayhap ye wouldn't

have had to travel from Euston in an invalid's carriage. If ye hadn't

had the misfortune to be born an obstinate simpleton ye'd ha' been

up and about six weeks back. But there's no doing anything with you

geniuses. It's all nerves with you and your like."

"Nerves!" exclaimed Edward Henry, pretending to scorn. But he was

delighted at the diagnosis.

"Nerves," repeated the doctor, firmly. "Ye go gadding off to America.

Ye get yeself mixed up in theatres.... How's the theatre? I see yer

famous play's coming to an end next week."

"And what if it is?" said Edward Henry, jealous for reputations,

including his own. "It will have run for a hundred and one nights. And

right through August too! No modern poetry play ever did run as long

in London, and no other ever will. I've given the intellectual theatre

the biggest ad. it ever had. And I've made money on it. I should have

made more if I'd ended the run a fortnight ago, but I was determined

to pass the hundredth night. And I shall do!"

"And what are ye for giving next?"

"I'm not for giving anything next, doc. I've let the Regent for five

years at seven thousand five hundred pounds a year to a musical comedy

syndicate, since you're so curious. And when I've paid the ground rent

and taxes and repairs, and something towards a sinking-fund, and six

per cent on my capital, I shall have not far off two thousand pounds a

year clear annual profit. You may say what you like, but that's what I

call business!"

It was a remarkable fact that, while giving undemanded information to

Dr. Stirling, Edward Henry was in reality defending himself against

the accusations of his wife--accusations which, by the way, she had

never uttered, but which he thought he read sometimes in her face. He

might of course have told his wife these agreeable details directly,

and in private. But he was a husband, and, like many husbands, apt to

be indirect.

Nellie said not a word.

"Then you're giving up London?" The doctor rose to depart.

"I am," said Edward Henry, almost blushing.

"Why?"

"Well," the genius answered. "Those theatrical things are altogether

too exciting and risky! And they're such queer people--Great Scott!

I've come out on the right side, as it happens, but--well, I'm not as

young as I was. I've done with London. The Five Towns are good enough

for me."

Nellie, unable to restrain a note of triumph, indiscreetly remarked,

with just the air of superior sagacity that in a wife drives husbands

to fury and to foolishness:

"I should think so indeed!"

Edward Henry leaped from his chair, and the swansdown quilt swathed

his slippered feet.

"Nell," he exploded, clenching his hand. "If you say that once more

in that tone--once more, mind!--I'll go and take a flat in London

to-morrow!"

The doctor crackled with laughter. Nellie smiled. Even Robert, who had

completely ignored the doctor's entrance, glanced round with creased

brows.

"Sit down, dearest," Nellie quietly enjoined the invalid.

But he would not sit down, and, to show his independence, he helped

his wife to escort Stirling into the lobby.

Robert, now alone with the ignored young clerk tapping at the table,

turned towards him, and in his deliberate, judicial, disdainful,

childish voice said to him:

"Isn't father a funny man?"