Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]




                              THE OLD ADAM

                         _A STORY OF ADVENTURE_


                                   BY

                             ARNOLD BENNETT

             AUTHOR OF "THE OLD WIVES’ TALE," "HOW TO LIVE
                   ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY," ETC.




                                NEW YORK
                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




                            Copyright, 1913
                       BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




                                CONTENTS


                                 PART I

CHAPTER

      I. Dog-Bite
     II. The Bank-Note
    III. Wilkins’s
     IV. Entry Into The Theatrical World
      V. Mr. Sachs Talks
     VI. Lord Woldo And Lady Woldo


                                PART II

    VII. Corner-stone
   VIII. Dealing with Elsie
     IX. The First Night
      X. Isabel




                              THE OLD ADAM

                                 PART I



                              THE OLD ADAM



                               CHAPTER I

                                DOG-BITE

                                   I.

"And yet," Edward Henry Machin reflected as at six minutes to six he
approached his own dwelling at the top of Bleakridge, "and yet--I don’t
feel so jolly after all!"

The first two words of this disturbing meditation had reference to the
fact that, by telephoning twice to his stockbrokers at Manchester, he
had just made the sum of three hundred and forty-one pounds in a purely
speculative transaction concerning Rubber shares.  (It was in the autumn
of the great gambling year, 1910).  He had simply opened his lucky and
wise mouth at the proper moment, and the money, like ripe golden fruit,
had fallen into it, a gift from benign Heaven, surely a cause for
happiness!  And yet--he did not feel so jolly!  He was surprised, he was
even a little hurt, to discover by introspection that monetary gain was
not necessarily accompanied by felicity.  Nevertheless, this very
successful man of the world of the Five Towns, having been born on the
27th of May, 1867, had reached the age of forty-three and a half years.

"I must be getting older," he reflected.

He was right.  He was still young, as every man of forty-three will
agree, but he was getting older. A few years ago a windfall of Three
hundred and forty-one pounds would not have been followed by morbid
self-analysis; it would have been followed by unreasoning instinctive
elation, which elation would have endured at least twelve hours.

As he disappeared within the reddish garden wall which sheltered his
abode from the publicity of Trafalgar Road, he half hoped to see Nellie
waiting for him on the famous marble step of the porch, for the woman
had long, long since invented a way of scouting for his advent from the
small window in the bathroom.  But there was nobody on the marble step.
His melancholy increased.  At the midday meal he had complained of
neuralgia, and hence this was an evening upon which he might fairly have
expected to see sympathy charmingly attired on the porch.  It is true
that the neuralgia had completely gone.  "Still," he said to himself
with justifiable sardonic gloom, "how does she know my neuralgia’s gone?
She doesn’t know."

Having opened the front door with the thinnest, neatest latchkey in the
Five Towns, he entered his home and stumbled slightly over a brush that
was lying against the sunk door-mat.  He gazed at that brush with
resentment.  It was a dilapidated handbrush.  The offensive object would
have been out of place, at nightfall, in the lobby of any house.  But in
the lobby of his house--the house which he had planned a dozen years
earlier to the special end of minimising domestic labour, and which he
had always kept up to date with the latest devices--in his lobby the
spectacle of a vile outworn hand-brush at tea-time amounted to a
scandal.  Less than a fortnight previously he had purchased and
presented to his wife a marvellous electric vacuum-cleaner, surpassing
all former vacuum-cleaners.  You simply attached this machine by a cord
to the wall, like a dog, and waved it in mysterious passes over the
floor, like a fan, and the house was clean!  He was as proud of this
machine as though he had invented it, instead of having merely bought
it; every day he enquired about its feats, expecting enthusiastic
replies as a sort of reward for his own keenness; and be it said that he
had had enthusiastic replies.

And now this obscene hand-brush!

As he carefully removed his hat and his beautiful new Melton overcoat
(which had the colour and the soft smoothness of a damson), he
animadverted upon the astounding negligence of women.  There were
Nellie, his wife; his mother, the nurse, the cook, the maid--five of
them; and in his mind they had all plotted together--a conspiracy of
carelessness--to leave the inexcusable tool in his lobby for him to
stumble over.  What was the use of accidentally procuring three hundred
and forty-one pounds?

Still no sign of Nellie, though he purposely made a noisy rattle with
his ebon walking-stick.  Then the maid burst out of the kitchen with a
tray and the principal utensils for high tea thereon.  She had a guilty
air.  The household was evidently late. Two steps at a time he rushed
up-stairs to the bathroom, so as to be waiting in the dining-room at six
precisely, in order, if possible, to shame the household and fill it
with remorse and unpleasantness. Yet, ordinarily, he was not a very
prompt man, nor did he delight in giving pain.  On the contrary, he was
apt to be casual, blithe, and agreeable.

The bathroom was his peculiar domain, which he was always modernising,
and where his talent for the ingenious organisation of comfort and his
utter indifference to esthetic beauty had the fullest scope. By
universal consent admitted to be the finest bathroom in the Five Towns,
it typified the whole house. He was disappointed on this occasion to see
no untidy trace in it of the children’s ablution; some transgression of
the supreme domestic law that the bathroom must always be free and
immaculate when Father wanted it would have suited his gathering humour.
As he washed his hands and cleansed his well-trimmed nails with a
nail-brush that had cost five shillings and sixpence, he glanced at
himself in the mirror which he was splashing.  A stoutish,
broad-shouldered, fair, chubby man with a short bright beard and
plenteous bright hair!  His necktie pleased him; the elegance of his
turned-back wristbands pleased him; and he liked the rich down on his
forearms.

He could not believe that he looked forty-three and a half.  And yet he
had recently had an idea of shaving off his beard, partly to defy time,
but partly, also (I must admit), because a friend had suggested to him,
wildly perhaps, that if he dispensed with a beard his hair might grow
more sturdily.  Yes, there was one weak spot in the middle of the top of
his head where the crop had of late disconcertingly thinned.  The
hair-dresser had informed him that the symptom would vanish under
electric massage, and that, if he doubted the bonafides of
hair-dressers, any doctor would testify to the value of electric
massage.  But now Edward Henry Machin, strangely discouraged,
inexplicably robbed of the zest of existence, decided that it was not
worth while to shave off his beard.  Nothing was worth while.  If he was
forty-three and a half, he was forty-three and a half.  To become bald
was the common lot.  Moreover, beardless, he would need the service of a
barber every day.  And he was absolutely persuaded that not a barber
worth the name could be found in the Five Towns.  He actually went to
Manchester, thirty-six miles, to get his hair cut.  The operation never
cost him less than a sovereign and half a day’s time.  And he honestly
deemed himself to be a fellow of simple tastes!  Such is the effect of
the canker of luxury. Happily he could afford these simple tastes; for,
although not rich in the modern significance of the term, he paid income
tax on some five thousand pounds a year, without quite convincing the
Surveyor of Taxes that he was an honest man.

He brushed the thick hair over the weak spot, he turned down his
wristbands, he brushed the collar of his jacket, and lastly his beard;
and he put on his jacket--with a certain care, for he was very neat.
And then, reflectively twisting his moustache to military points, he
spied through the smaller window to see whether the new high hoarding of
the football-ground really did prevent a serious observer from descrying
wayfarers as they breasted the hill from Hanbridge.  It did not.  Then
he spied through the larger window upon the yard, to see whether the
wall of the new rooms which he had lately added to his house showed any
further trace of damp, and whether the new chauffeur was washing the new
motor-car with all his heart.  The wall showed no further trace of damp,
and the new chauffeur’s bent back seemed to symbolise an extreme
conscientiousness.

Then the clock on the landing struck six, and he hurried off to put the
household to open shame.



                                  II.


Nellie came into the dining-room two minutes after her husband.  As
Edward Henry had laboriously counted these two minutes almost second by
second on the dining-room clock, he was very tired of waiting.  His
secret annoyance was increased by the fact that Nellie took off her
white apron in the doorway and flung it hurriedly on to the table-tray
which, during the progress of meals, was established outside the
dining-room door. He did not actually witness this operation of
undressing, because Nellie was screened by the half-closed door; but he
was entirely aware of it.  He disliked it, and he had always disliked
it.  When Nellie was at work, either as a mother or as the owner of
certain fine silver ornaments, he rather enjoyed the wonderful white
apron, for it suited her temperament; but as the head of a household
with six thousand pounds a year at its disposal, he objected to any hint
of the thing at meals.  And to-night he objected to it altogether.  Who
could guess from the homeliness of their family life that he was in a
position to spend a hundred pounds a week and still have enough income
left over to pay the salary of a town clerk or so?  Nobody could guess;
and he felt that people ought to be able to guess.  When he was young he
would have esteemed an income of six thousand pounds a year as
necessarily implicating feudal state, valets, castles, yachts, family
solicitors, racing-stables, county society, dinner-calls, and a drawling
London accent.  Why should his wife wear an apron at all?  But the sad
truth was that neither his wife nor his mother ever _looked_ rich, nor
even endeavoured to look rich.  His mother would carry an eighty-pound
sealskin as though she had picked it up at a jumble sale, and his wife
put such simplicity into the wearing of a hundred-and-eighty pound
diamond ring that its expensiveness was generally quite wasted.

And yet, while the logical male in him scathingly condemned this
feminine defect of character, his private soul was glad of it, for he
well knew that he would have been considerably irked by the complexities
and grandeurs of high life.  But never would he have admitted this.

Nellie’s face as she sat down was not limpid.  He understood naught of
it.  More than twenty years had passed since they had first met--he and
a wistful little creature--at a historic town-hall dance. He could still
see the wistful little creature in those placid and pure features, in
that buxom body; but now there was a formidable, capable, and
experienced woman there too.  Impossible to credit that the wistful
little creature was thirty-seven!  But she was.  Indeed, it was very
doubtful if she would ever see thirty-eight again.  Once he had had the
most romantic feelings about her.  He could recall the slim flexibility
of her waist, the timorous, melting invitation of her eyes.  And
now--such was human existence!

She sat up erect on her chair.  She did not apologise for being late.
She made no inquiry as to his neuralgia.  On the other hand, she was not
cross. She was just neutral, polite, cheerful, and apparently conscious
of perfection.  He strongly desired to inform her of the exact time of
day, but his lips would not articulate the words.

"Maud," she said with divine calm to the maid who bore in the baked York
ham under its silver canopy, "you haven’t taken away that brush that’s
in the passage."  Another illustration of Nellie’s inability to live up
to six thousand pounds a year; she would always refer to the hall as the
"passage."

"Please’m, I did, m’m," replied Maud, now as conscious of perfection as
her mistress.  "He must have took it back again."

"Who’s ’he’?" demanded the master.

"Carlo, sir."  Upon which triumph Maud retired.

Edward Henry was dashed.  Nevertheless, he quickly recovered his
presence of mind, and sought about for a justification of his previous
verdict upon the negligence of five women.

"It would have been easy enough to put the brush where the dog couldn’t
get at it," he said.  But he said this strictly to himself.  He could
not say it aloud.  Nor could he say aloud the words "neuralgia," "three
hundred and forty-one pounds," any more than he could say "late."

That he was in a peculiar mental condition is proved by the fact that he
did not remark the absence of his mother until he was putting her share
of baked ham on to a plate.

He thought, "This is a bit thick, this is!" meaning the extreme lateness
of his mother for the meal. But his only audible remark was a somewhat
impatient banging down of the hot plate in front of his mother’s empty
chair.

In answer to this banging, Nellie quietly began:

"Your mother--"

(He knew instantly, then, that Nellie was disturbed about something or
other.  Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law lived together under one roof
in perfect amity.  Nay more, they often formed powerful and unscrupulous
leagues against him. But whenever Nellie was disturbed, by no matter
what, she would say "your mother" instead of merely "Mother."  It was an
extraordinary subtle, silly, and effective way of putting him in the
wrong.)

"Your mother is staying up-stairs with Robert."

Robert was the eldest child, aged eight.

"Oh!" breathed Edward Henry.  He might have enquired what the nurse was
for; he might have enquired how his mother meant to get her tea; but he
refrained, adding simply, "What’s up now?"

And in retort to his wife’s "your," he laid a faint emphasis on the word
"now," to imply that those women were always inventing some fresh
imaginary woe for the children.

"Carlo’s bitten him--in the calf," said Nellie, tightening her lips.

This, at any rate, was not imaginary.

"The kid was teasing him as usual, I suppose?" he suggested.

"That I don’t know," said Nellie.  "But I know we must get rid of that
dog."

"Serious?"

"Of course we must," Nellie insisted, with an inadvertent heat which she
immediately cooled.

"I mean the bite."

"Well--it’s a bite right enough."

"And you’re thinking of hydrophobia, death amid horrible agony, and so
on."

"No, I’m not," she said stoutly, trying to smile.

But he knew she was.  And he knew also that the bite was a trifle.  If
it had been a good bite, she would have made it enormous; she would have
hinted that the dog had left a chasm in the boy’s flesh.

"Yes, you are," he continued to twit her, encouraged by her attempt at a
smile.

However, the smile expired.

"I suppose you won’t deny that Carlo’s teeth may have been dirty?  He’s
always nosing in some filth or other," she said challengingly, in a
measured tone of sagacity.  "And there may be blood-poisoning."

"Blood-fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Edward Henry.

Such a nonsensical and infantile rejoinder deserved no answer, and it
received none.  Shortly afterwards Maud entered and whispered that
Nellie was wanted up-stairs.  As soon as his wife had gone, Edward Henry
rang the bell.

"Maud," he said, "bring me the _Signal_ out of my left-hand
overcoat-pocket."

And he defiantly finished his meal at leisure, with the news of the day
propped up against the flower-pot, which he had set before him instead
of the dish of ham.



                                  III.


Later, catching through the open door fragments of a conversation on the
stairs which indicated that his mother was at last coming down for tea,
he sped like a threatened delinquent into the drawing-room.  He had no
wish to encounter his mother, though that woman usually said little.

The drawing-room, after the bathroom, was Edward Henry’s favourite
district in the home.  Since he could not spend the whole of his time in
the bathroom,--and he could not!--he wisely gave a special care to the
drawing-room, and he loved it as one always loves that upon which one
has bestowed benefits.  He was proud of the drawing-room, and he had the
right to be.  The principal object in it, at night, was the electric
chandelier, which would have been adequate for a lighthouse.  Edward
Henry’s eyes were not what they used to be; and the minor advertisements
in the _Signal_, which constituted his sole evening perusals, often
lacked legibility. Edward Henry sincerely believed in light and heat; he
was almost the only person in the Five Towns who did.  In the Five Towns
people have fires in their grates--not to warm the room, but to make the
room bright.  Seemingly they use their pride to keep themselves warm.
At any rate, whenever Edward Henry talked to them of radiators, they
would sternly reply that a radiator did not and could not brighten a
room.  Edward Henry had made the great discovery that an efficient
chandelier will brighten a room better even than a fire; and he had
gilded his radiator.  The notion of gilding the radiator was not his
own; he had seen a gilded radiator in the newest hotel at Birmingham,
and had rejoiced as some peculiar souls rejoice when they meet a fine
line in a new poem.  (In concession to popular prejudice, Edward Henry
had fire-grates in his house, and fires therein during exceptionally
frosty weather; but this did not save him from being regarded in the
Five Towns as in some ways a peculiar soul.)  The effulgent source of
dark heat was scientifically situated in front of the window, and on
ordinarily cold evenings Edward Henry and his wife and mother, and an
acquaintance if one happened to come in, would gather round the radiator
and play bridge or dummy whist.

The other phenomena of the drawing-room which particularly interested
Edward Henry were the Turkey carpet, the four vast easy chairs, the
sofa, the imposing cigar-cabinet, and the mechanical piano-player.  At
one brief period he had hovered a good deal about the revolving bookcase
containing the encyclopedia, to which his collection of books was
limited; but the frail passion for literature had not survived a
struggle with the seductions of the mechanical piano-player.

The walls of the room never drew his notice. He had chosen, some years
before, a patent washable kind of wall-paper (which could be wiped over
with a damp cloth), and he had also chosen the pattern of the paper, but
it is a fact that he could spend hours in any room without even seeing
the pattern of its paper.  In the same way, his wife’s cushions and
little draperies and bows were invisible to him, though he had searched
for and duly obtained the perfect quality of swansdown which filled the
cushions.

The one ornament of the walls which attracted him was a large and
splendidly framed oil-painting of a ruined castle in the midst of a
sombre forest through which cows were strolling.  In the tower of the
castle was a clock, and this clock was a realistic timepiece whose
fingers moved and told the hour.  Two of the oriel windows of the castle
were realistic holes in its masonry; through one of them you could put a
key to wind up the clock, and through the other you could put a key to
wind up a secret musical box which played sixteen different tunes.  He
had bought this handsome relic of the Victorian era (not less artistic,
despite your scorn, than many devices for satisfying the higher
instincts of the present day) at an auction sale in the Strand, London.
But it, too, had been supplanted in his esteem by the mechanical
piano-player.

He now selected an example of the most expensive cigar in the
cigar-cabinet, and lighted it as only a connoisseur can light a
cigar--lovingly; he blew out the match lingeringly, with regret, and
dropped it and the cigar’s red collar with care into a large copper bowl
on the centre table, instead of flinging it against the Japanese
umbrella in the fireplace. (A grave disadvantage of radiators is that
you cannot throw odds and ends into them.)  He chose the most expensive
cigar because he wanted comfort and peace.  The ham was not digesting
very well.

Then he sat down and applied himself to the property advertisements in
the _Signal_, a form of sensational serial which usually enthralled
him--but not to-night.  He allowed the paper to lapse on to the floor,
and then rose impatiently, rearranged the thick dark blue curtains
behind the radiator, and finally yielded to the silent call of the
mechanical piano-player.  He quite knew that to dally with the
piano-player while smoking a high-class cigar was to insult the cigar;
but he did not care.  He tilted the cigar upwards from an extreme corner
of his mouth, and through the celestial smoke gazed at the titles of the
new music-rolls which had been delivered that day, and which were ranged
on the top of the piano itself.

And while he did so he was thinking:

"Why in thunder didn’t the little thing come and tell me at once about
that kid and his dog-bite?  I wonder why she didn’t!  She seemed only to
mention it by accident.  I wonder why she didn’t bounce into the
bathroom and tell me at once?"

But it was untrue that he sought vainly for an answer to this riddle.
He was aware of the answer.  He even kept saying over the answer to
himself:

"She’s made up her mind I’ve been teasing her a bit too much lately
about those kids and their precious illnesses.  And she’s doing the
dignified. That’s what she’s doing!  She’s doing the dignified!"

Of course, instantly after his tea he ought to have gone up-stairs to
inspect the wounded victim of dogs.  The victim was his own child, and
its mother was his wife.  He knew that he ought to have gone up-stairs
long since.  He knew he ought now to go, and the sooner the better.  But
somehow he could not go; he could not bring himself to go. In the minor
and major crises of married life there are not two partners but four;
each partner has a dual personality; each partner is indeed two
different persons, and one of these fights against the other, with the
common result of a fatal inaction.

The wickeder of the opposing persons in Edward Henry, getting the upper
hand of the more virtuous, sniggered.  "Dirty teeth, indeed!
Blood-poisoning, indeed!  Why not rabies, while she’s about it? I
guarantee she’s dreaming of coffins and mourning coaches already!"

Scanning nonchalantly the titles of the music-rolls, he suddenly saw:
"Funeral March.  Chopin."

"She shall have it," he said, affixing the roll to the mechanism.  And
added, "Whatever it is!"

For he was not acquainted with the Funeral March from Chopin’s
Pianoforte Sonata.  His musical education had in truth begun only a year
earlier, with the advertisement of the "Pianisto" mechanical player.  He
was a judge of advertisements, and the "Pianisto" literature pleased him
in a high degree.  He justifiably reckoned that he could distinguish
between honest and dishonest advertising.  He made a deep study of the
question of mechanical players, and deliberately came to the conclusion
that the "Pianisto" was the best.  It was also the most costly; but one
of the conveniences of having six thousand pounds a year is that you
need not deny yourself the best mechanical player because it happens to
be the most costly.  He bought a "Pianisto," and incidentally he bought
a superb grand piano, and exiled the old cottage piano to the nursery.

The "Pianisto" was the best, partly because, like the vacuum-cleaner, it
could be operated by electricity, and partly because, by means of
certain curved lines on the unrolling paper, and of certain gun-metal
levers and clutches, it enabled the operator to put his secret ardent
soul into the music. Assuredly it had given Edward Henry a taste for
music.  The whole world of musical compositions was his to conquer, and
he conquered it at the rate of about two great masters a month.  From
Handel to Richard Strauss, even from Palestrina to Debussy, the
achievements of genius lay at his mercy. He criticised them with a
freedom that was entirely unprejudiced by tradition.  Beethoven was no
more to him than Arthur Sullivan; indeed, was rather less.  The works of
his choice were the "Tannhäuser" overture, a potpourri of Verdi’s
"Aïda," Chopin’s Study in Thirds--which ravished him--and a selection
from "The Merry Widow," which also ravished him.  So that on the whole
it may be said that he had a very good natural taste.

He at once liked Chopin’s Funeral March.  He entered profoundly into the
spirit of it.  With the gun-metal levers he produced in a marvellous
fashion the long tragic roll of the drums, and by the manipulation of a
clutch he distilled into the chant at the graveside a melancholy
sweetness that rent the heart.  The later crescendi were overwhelming.
And as he played there, with the bright blaze of the chandelier on his
fair hair and beard, and the blue cigar-smoke in his nostrils, and the
effluence of the gilded radiator behind him, and the intimacy of the
drawn window curtains and the closed and curtained door folding him in
from the world, and the agony of the music grieving his artistic soul to
the core--as he played there, he grew gradually happier and happier, and
the zest of existence seemed to return.  It was not only that he felt
the elemental, unfathomable satisfaction of a male who is sheltered in
solitude from a pack of women that have got on his nerves; there was
also the more piquant assurance that he was behaving in a very sprightly
manner.  How long was it since he had accomplished anything worthy of
his ancient reputation as a "card," as "the" card of the Five Towns?  He
could not say; but now he knew that he was being a card again.  The
whole town would smile and forgive and admire if it learnt that--

Nellie invaded the room.  She had resumed the affray.

"Denry!" she reproached him, in an uncontrolled voice.  "I’m ashamed of
you!  I really am!"  She was no longer doing the dignified.  The mask
was off, and the unmistakable lineaments of the outraged mother
appeared.  That she should address him as "Denry" proved the intensity
of her agitation.  Years ago, when he had been made an alderman, his
wife and his mother had decided that "Denry" was no longer a suitable
name for him, and had abandoned it in favour of "Edward Henry."

He ceased playing.

"Why?" he protested, with a ridiculous air of innocence.  "I’m only
playing Chopin.  Can’t I play Chopin?"

He was rather surprised and impressed that she had recognised the piece
for what it was.  But of course she did, as a fact, know something about
music, he remembered, though she never touched the "Pianisto."

"I think it’s a pity you can’t choose some other evening for your
funeral marches!" she exclaimed.

"If that’s it," said Edward Henry like lightning, "why did you stick me
out you weren’t afraid of hydrophobia?"

"I’ll thank you to come up-stairs," she replied with warmth.

"Oh, all right, my dear!  All right!" he cooed.

And they went up-stairs in a rather solemn procession.



                                  IV.


Nellie led the way to the chamber known as "Maisie’s room," where the
youngest of the Machins was wont to sleep in charge of the nurse, who,
under the supervision of the mother of all three, had dominion over
Robert, Ralph, and their little sister.  The first thing that Edward
Henry noticed was the screen which shut off one of the beds.  The
unfurling of the four-fold screen was always a sure sign that Nellie was
taking an infantile illness seriously.  It was an indication to Edward
Henry of the importance of the dog-bite in Nellie’s esteem.  When all
the chicks of the brood happened to be simultaneously sound, the screen
reposed, inconspicuous, at an angle against a wall behind the door; but
when pestilence was abroad, the screen travelled from one room to
another in the wake of it, and, spreading wide, took part in the battle
of life and death.

In an angle of the screen, on the side of it away from the bed and near
the fire (in times of stress Nellie would not rely on radiators), sat
old Mrs. Machin, knitting.  She was a thin, bony woman of sixty-nine
years, and as hard and imperishable as teak.  So far as her son knew,
she had only had two illnesses in her life.  The first was an attack of
influenza, and the second was an attack of acute rheumatism, which had
incapacitated her for several weeks.  Edward Henry and Nellie had taken
advantage of her helplessness, then, to force her to give up her
barbaric cottage in Brougham Street and share permanently the splendid
comfort of their home.  She existed in their home like a philosophic
prisoner of war at the court of conquerors, behaving faultlessly,
behaving magnanimously in the melancholy grandeur of her fall, but never
renouncing her soul’s secret independence, nor permitting herself to
forget that she was on foreign ground.  When Edward Henry looked at
those yellow and seasoned fingers which, by hard manual labour, had kept
herself and him in the young days of his humble obscurity, and which,
during sixty years had not been idle for more than six weeks in all, he
grew almost apologetic for his wealth.  They reminded him of the day
when his total resources were five pounds, won in a wager, and of the
day when he drove proudly about behind a mule collecting other people’s
rents, and of the glittering day when he burst in on her from Llandudno
with over a thousand gold sovereigns in a hat-box,--product of his first
great picturesque coup,--imagining himself to be an English Jay Gould.
She had not blenched even then.  She had not blenched since.  And she
never would blench.  In spite of his gorgeous position and his unique
reputation, in spite of her well-concealed but notorious pride in him,
he still went in fear of that ageless woman, whose undaunted eye always
told him that he was still the lad Denry, and her inferior in moral
force.  The curve of her thin lips seemed ever to be warning him that
with her pretensions were quite useless, and that she saw through him,
and through him to the innermost grottoes of his poor human depravity.

He caught her eye guiltily.

"Behold the alderman!" she murmured with grimness.

That was all.  But the three words took thirty years off his back,
snatched the half-crown cigar out of his hand, and reduced him again to
the raw, hungry boy of Brougham Street.  And he knew that he had sinned
gravely in not coming up-stairs very much earlier.

"Is that you, Father?" called the high voice of Robert from the back of
the screen.

He had to admit to his son that it was he.

The infant lay on his back in Maisie’s bed, while his mother sat lightly
on the edge of nurse’s bed near-by.

"Well, you’re a nice chap!" said Edward Henry, avoiding Nellie’s glance,
but trying to face his son as one innocent man may face another, and not
perfectly succeeding.  He never could feel like a real father somehow.

"My temperature’s above normal," announced Robert proudly, and then
added with regret, "but not much!"

There was the clinical thermometer--instrument which Edward Henry
despised and detested as being an inciter of illnesses--in a glass of
water on the table between the two beds.

"Father!" Robert began again.

"Well, Robert?" said Edward Henry cheerfully.

He was glad that the child was in one of his rare loquacious moods,
because the chatter not only proved that the dog had done no serious
damage,--it also eased the silent strain between himself and Nellie.

"Why did you play the Funeral March, Father?" asked Robert; and the
question fell into the tranquillity of the room rather like a bomb that
had not quite decided whether or not to burst.

For the second time that evening Edward Henry was dashed.

"Have you been meddling with my music-rolls?"

"No, Father.  I only read the labels."

This child simply read everything.

"How did you know I was playing a funeral march?" Edward Henry demanded.

"Oh, _I_ didn’t tell him!" Nellie put in, excusing herself before she
was accused.  She smiled benignly, as an angel woman, capable of
forgiving all. But there were moments when Edward Henry hated moral
superiority and Christian meekness in a wife. Moreover, Nellie somewhat
spoiled her own effect by adding with an artificial continuation of the
smile, "You needn’t look at _me_!"

Edward Henry considered the remark otiose. Though he had indeed ventured
to look at her, he had not looked at her in the manner which she
implied.

"It made a noise like funerals and things," Robert explained.

"Well, it seems to me, _you_ have been playing a funeral march," said
Edward Henry to the child.

He thought this rather funny, rather worthy of himself, but the child
answered with ruthless gravity and a touch of disdain, for he was a
disdainful child, without bowels:

"I don’t know what you mean, Father."  The curve of his lips (he had his
grandmother’s lips) appeared to say, "I wish you wouldn’t try to be
silly, Father."  However, youth forgets very quickly, and the next
instant Robert was beginning once more, "Father!"

"Well, Robert?"

By mutual agreement of the parents, the child was never addressed as
"Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive.  In their practical
opinion a child’s name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or
dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not
been baptised after his father, or after any male member of either the
Machin or the Cotterill family.  Why should family names be perpetuated
merely because they were family names?  A natural human reaction, this,
against the excessive sentimentalism of the Victorian era!

"What does ’stamped out’ mean?" Robert enquired.

Now Robert, among other activities, busied himself in the collection of
postage-stamps, and in consequence his father’s mind, under the impulse
of the question, ran immediately to postage-stamps.

"Stamped out?" said Edward Henry, with the air of omniscience that a
father is bound to assume. "Postage-stamps are stamped-out--by a
machine--you see."

Robert’s scorn of this explanation was manifest.

"Well," Edward Henry, piqued, made another attempt, "you stamp a fire
out with your feet."  And he stamped illustratively on the floor.  After
all, the child was only eight.

"I knew all that before," said Robert coldly. "You don’t understand."

"What makes you ask, dear?  Let us show Father your leg."  Nellie’s
voice was soothing.

"Yes," Robert murmured, staring reflectively at the ceiling.  "That’s
it.  It says in the encyclopedia that hydrophobia is stamped out in this
country--by Mr. Long’s muzzling order.  Who is Mr. Long?"

A second bomb had fallen on exactly the same spot as the first, and the
two exploded simultaneously.  And the explosion was none the less
terrible because it was silent and invisible.  The tidy domestic chamber
was strewn in a moment with an awful mass of wounded susceptibilities.
Beyond the screen the _nick-nick_ of grandmother’s steel needles stopped
and started again.  It was characteristic of her temperament that she
should recover before the younger generations could recover. Edward
Henry, as befitted his sex, regained his nerve a little earlier than
Nellie.

"I told you never to touch my encyclopedia," said he sternly.  Robert
had twice been caught on his stomach on the floor with a vast volume
open under his chin, and his studies had been traced by vile
thumb-marks.

"I know," said Robert.

Whenever anybody gave that child a piece of unsolicited information, he
almost invariably replied, "I know."

"But hydrophobia!" cried Nellie.  "How did you know about hydrophobia?"

"We had it in spellings last week," Robert explained.

"The deuce you did!" muttered Edward Henry.

The one bright fact of the many-sided and gloomy crisis was the very
obvious truth that Robert was the most extraordinary child that ever
lived.

"But when on earth did you get at the encyclopedia, Robert?" his mother
exclaimed, completely at a loss.

"It was before you came in from Hillport," the wondrous infant answered.
"After my leg had stopped hurting me a bit."

"But when I came in Nurse said it had only just happened!"

"Shows how much _she_ knew!" said Robert, with contempt.

"Does your leg hurt you now?" Edward Henry enquired.

"A bit.  That’s why I can’t go to sleep, of course."

"Well, let’s have a look at it."  Edward Henry attempted jollity.

"Mother’s wrapped it all up in boracic wool."

The bed-clothes were drawn down and the leg gradually revealed.  And the
sight of the little soft leg, so fragile and defenceless, really did
touch Edward Henry.  It made him feel more like an authentic father than
he had felt for a long time. And the sight of the red wound hurt him.
Still, it was a beautifully clean wound, and it was not a large wound.

"It’s a clean wound," he observed judiciously. In spite of himself, he
could not keep a certain flippant harsh quality out of his tone.

"Well, I’ve naturally washed it with carbolic," Nellie returned sharply.

He illogically resented this sharpness.

"Of course he was bitten through his stocking?"

"Of course," said Nellie, re-enveloping the wound hastily, as though
Edward Henry was not worthy to regard it.

"Well, then, by the time they got through the stocking, the animal’s
teeth couldn’t be dirty. Every one knows that."

Nellie shut her lips.

"Were you teasing Carlo?" Edward Henry demanded curtly of his son.

"I don’t know."

Whenever anybody asked that child for a piece of information, he almost
invariably replied, "I don’t know."

"How, you don’t know?  You must know whether you were teasing the dog or
not!"  Edward Henry was nettled.

The renewed spectacle of his own wound had predisposed Robert to feel a
great and tearful sympathy for himself.  His mouth now began to take
strange shapes and to increase magically in area, and beads appeared in
the corners of his large eyes.

"I--I was only measuring his tail by his hind leg," he blubbered, and
then sobbed.

Edward Henry did his best to save his dignity.

"Come, come!" he reasoned, less menacingly. "Boys who can read
enyclopedias mustn’t be cry-babies.  You’d no business measuring Carlo’s
tail by his hind leg.  You ought to remember that that dog’s older than
you."  And this remark, too, he thought rather funny, but apparently he
was alone in his opinion.

Then he felt something against his calf.  And it was Carlo’s nose.
Carlo was a large, very shaggy and unkempt Northern terrier, but owing
to vagueness of his principal points, due doubtless to a vagueness in
his immediate ancestry, it was impossible to decide whether he had come
from the north or the south side of the Tweed.  This aging friend of
Edward Henry’s, surmising that something unusual was afoot in his house,
and having entirely forgotten the trifling episode of the bite, had
unobtrusively come to make enquiries.

"Poor old boy!" said Edward Henry, stooping to pat the dog.  "Did they
try to measure his tail with his hind leg?"

The gesture was partly instinctive, for he loved Carlo; but it also had
its origin in sheer nervousness, in sheer ignorance of what was the best
thing to do. However, he was at once aware that he had done the worst
thing.  Had not Nellie announced that the dog must be got rid of?  And
here he was fondly caressing the bloodthirsty dog!  With a hysterical
movement of the lower part of her leg, Nellie pushed violently against
the dog,--she did not kick, but she nearly kicked,--and Carlo, faintly
howling a protest, fled.

Edward Henry was hurt.  He escaped from between the beds, and from that
close, enervating domestic atmosphere where he was misunderstood by
women and disdained by infants.  He wanted fresh air; he wanted bars,
whiskies, billiard-rooms, and the society of masculine men about town.
The whole of his own world was against him.

As he passed by his knitting mother, she ignored him and moved not.  She
had a great gift of holding aloof from conjugal complications.

On the landing he decided that he would go out at once into the major
world.  Half-way down the stairs he saw his overcoat on the hall-stand,
beckoning to him and offering release.

Then he heard the bedroom door and his wife’s footsteps.

"Edward Henry!"

"Well?"

He stopped and looked up inimically at her face, which overhung the
banisters.  It was the face of a woman outraged in her most profound
feelings, but amazingly determined to be sweet.

"What do you think of it?"

"What do I think of what?  The wound?"

"Yes."

"Why, it’s simply nothing.  Nothing at all. You know how that kid always
heals up quickly. You won’t be able to find the wound in a day or two."

"Don’t you think it ought to be cauterised at once?"

He moved downwards.

"No, I don’t.  I’ve been bitten three times in my life by dogs, and I
was never cauterised."

"Well, I _do_ think it ought to be cauterised."  She raised her voice
slightly as he retreated from her.  "And I shall be glad if you’ll call
in at Dr. Stirling’s and ask him to come round."

He made no reply, but put on his overcoat and his hat, and took his
stick.  Glancing up the stairs, he saw Nellie was now standing at the
head of them, under the electric light there, and watching him. He knew
that she thought he was cravenly obeying her command.  She could have no
idea that before she spoke to him he had already decided to put on his
overcoat and hat and take his stick and go forth into the major world.
However, that was no affair of his.

He hesitated a second.  Then the nurse appeared out of the kitchen with
a squalling Maisie in her arms, and ran up-stairs.  Why Maisie was
squalling, and why she should have been in the kitchen at such an hour
instead of in bed, he could not guess; but he could guess that if he
remained one second longer in that exasperating minor world he would
begin to smash furniture, and so he quitted it.



                                   V.


It was raining slightly, but he dared not return to the house for his
umbrella.  In the haze and wet of the shivering October night, the clock
of Bleakridge Church glowed like a fiery disk suspended in the sky; and,
mysteriously hanging there, without visible means of support, it seemed
to him somehow to symbolise the enigma of the universe and intensify his
inward gloom.  Never before had he had such feelings to such a degree.
It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that never before had the enigma
of the universe occurred to him. The side gates clicked as he stood
hesitant under the shelter of the wall, and a figure emerged from his
domain.  It was Bellfield, the new chauffeur, going across to his home
in the little square in front of the church.  Bellfield touched his cap
with an eager and willing hand, as new chauffeurs will.

"Want the car, sir?  Setting in for a wet night!"

"No, thanks."

It was a lie.  He did want the car.  He wanted the car so that he might
ride right away into a new and more interesting world, or at any rate
into Hanbridge, centre of the pleasures, the wickedness, and the
commerce of the Five Towns.  But he dared not have the car.  He dared
not have his own car.  He must slip off, noiseless and unassuming. Even
to go to Dr. Stirling’s he dared not have the car.  Besides, he could
have walked down the hill to Dr. Stirling’s in three minutes.  Not that
he had the least intention of going to Dr. Stirling’s. No!  His wife
imagined that he was going; but she was mistaken.  Within an hour, when
Dr. Stirling had failed to arrive, she would doubtless telephone, and
get her Dr. Stirling.  Not, however, with Edward Henry’s assistance!

He reviewed his conduct throughout the evening. In what particular had
it been sinful?  In no particular.  True, the accident to the boy was a
misfortune, but had he not borne that misfortune lightly, minimised it,
and endeavoured to teach others to bear it lightly?  His blithe humour
ought surely to have been an example to Nellie!  And as for the episode
of the funeral march on the "Pianisto," really, really, the tiresome
little thing ought to have better appreciated his whimsical drollery!

But Nellie was altered; he was altered; everything was altered.  He
remembered the ecstasy of their excursion to Switzerland.  He remembered
the rapture with which, on their honeymoon, he had clasped a new opal
bracelet on her exciting arm. He could not possibly have such sensations
now. What was the meaning of life?  Was life worth living?  The fact
was, he was growing old. Useless to pretend to himself that it was not
so.  Both he and she were growing old.  Only, she seemed to be placidly
content, and he was not content. And more and more the domestic
atmosphere and the atmosphere of the district fretted and even annoyed
him.  To-night’s affair was not unique, but it was a culmination.  He
gazed pessimistically north and south along the slimy expanse of
Trafalgar Road, which sank northwards in the direction of Dr.
Stirling’s, and southwards in the direction of joyous Hanbridge.  He
loathed and despised Trafalgar Road.  What was the use of making three
hundred and forty-one pounds by a shrewd speculation?  None.  He could
not employ three hundred and forty-one pounds to increase his happiness.
Money had become futile for him. Astounding thought!  He desired no more
of it.  He had a considerable income from investments, and also at least
four thousand a year from the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, that
wonderful but unpretentious organisation which now embraced every corner
of the Five Towns; that gorgeous invention for profitably taking care of
the pennies of the working classes; that excellent device, his own, for
selling the working classes every kind of goods at credit prices after
having received part of the money in advance!

"I want a change!" he said to himself, and threw away his cigar.

After all, the bitterest thought in his heart was perhaps that on that
evening he had tried to be a "card," and, for the first time in his
brilliant career as a "card," had failed.  He, Henry Machin, who had
been the youngest mayor of Bursley years and years ago; he, the
recognised amuser of the Five Towns; he, one of the greatest
"characters" that the Five Towns had ever produced--he had failed of an
effect!

He slipped out on to the pavement, and saw, under the gas-lamp, on the
new hoarding of the football-ground, a poster intimating that during
that particular week there was a gigantic attraction at the Empire Music
Hall at Hanbridge.  According to the posters, there was a gigantic
attraction every week at the Empire, but Edward Henry happened to know
that this week the attraction was indeed somewhat out of the common.
And to-night was Friday, the fashionable night for the bloods and the
modishness of the Five Towns.  He looked at the church clock, and then
at his watch.  He would be in time for the "second house," which started
at nine o’clock.  At the same moment an electric tram-car came
thundering up out of Bursley.  He boarded it, and was saluted by the
conductor. Remaining on the platform, he lit a cigarette, and tried to
feel cheerful; but he could not conquer his depression.

"Yes," he thought, "what I want is change--and a lot of it too!"




                               CHAPTER II

                             THE BANK-NOTE

                                   I.

Alderman Machin had to stand at the back, and somewhat towards the side,
of that part of the auditorium known as the Grand Circle at the Empire
Music Hall, Hanbridge. The attendants at the entrance and in the lounge,
where the salutation "Welcome" shone in electricity over a large
Cupid-surrounded mirror, had compassionately and yet exultingly told him
that there was not a seat left in the house.  He had shared their
exultation.  He had said to himself, full of honest pride in the Five
Towns: "This music-hall, admitted by the press to be one of the finest
in the provinces, holds over two thousand five hundred people.  And yet
we can fill it to overflowing twice every night!  And only a few years
ago there wasn’t a decent music-hall in the entire district!"

The word "progress" flitted through his head.

It was not strictly true that the Empire was or could be filled to
overflowing twice every night, but it was true that at that particular
moment not a seat was unsold; and the aspect of a crowded auditorium is
apt to give an optimistic quality to broad generalisations.  Alderman
Machin began instinctively to calculate the amount of money in the
house, and to wonder whether there would be a chance for a second
music-hall in the dissipated town of Hanbridge.  He also wondered why
the idea of a second music-hall in Hanbridge had never occurred to him
before.

The Grand Circle was so-called because it was grand.  Its plush
fauteuils cost a shilling, no mean price for a community where seven
pounds of potatoes can be bought for sixpence, and the view of the stage
therefrom was perfect.  But the alderman’s view was far from perfect,
since he had to peer as best he could between and above the shoulders of
several men, each apparently, but not really, taller than himself.  By
constant slight movements to comply with the movements of the rampart of
shoulders, he could discern fragments of various advertisements of soap,
motor-cars, whisky, shirts, perfume, pills, bricks, and tea, for the
drop-curtain was down.  And, curiously, he felt obliged to keep his eyes
on the drop-curtain, and across the long intervening vista of hats and
heads and smoke, to explore its most difficult corners again and again,
lest, when it went up, he might not be in proper practice for seeing
what was behind it.

Nevertheless, despite the marked inconveniences of his situation, he
felt brighter, he felt almost happy in this dense atmosphere of success.
He even found a certain peculiar and perverse satisfaction in the fact
that he had as yet been recognised by nobody.  Once or twice the owners
of shoulders had turned and deliberately glared at the worrying fellow
who had the impudence to be all the time peeping over them and between
them; they had not distinguished the fellow from any ordinary fellow.
Could they have known that he was the famous Alderman Edward Henry
Machin, founder and sole proprietor of the Thrift Club, into which their
wives were probably paying so much a week, they would most assuredly
have glared to another tune, and they would have said with pride
afterwards, "That chap Machin o’ Bursley was standing behind me at the
Empire to-night."  And though Machin is amongst the commonest names in
the Five Towns, all would have known that the great and admired Denry
was meant.  It was astonishing that a personage so notorious should not
have been instantly "spotted" in such a resort as the Empire.  More
proof that the Five Towns was a vast and seething concentration of
cities, and no longer a mere district where everybody knew everybody.

The curtain rose, and, as it did so, a thunderous, crashing applause of
greeting broke forth--applause that thrilled and impressed and inspired;
applause that made every individual in the place feel right glad that he
was there.  For the curtain had risen on the gigantic attraction which
many members of the audience were about to see for the fifth time that
week; in fact, it was rumoured that certain men of fashion, whose habit
was to refuse themselves nothing, had attended every performance of the
gigantic attraction since the second house on Monday.

The scene represented a restaurant of quiet aspect, into which entered a
waiter bearing a pile of plates some two feet high.  The waiter being
intoxicated, the tower of plates leaned this way and that as he
staggered about, and the whole house really did hold its breath in the
simultaneous hope and fear of an enormous and resounding smash. Then
entered a second intoxicated waiter, also bearing a pile of plates some
two feet high; and the risk of destruction was thus more than
doubled--it was quadrupled, for each waiter, in addition to the risks of
his own inebriety, was now subject to the dreadful peril of colliding
with the other. However, there was no catastrophe.

Then arrived two customers, one in a dress suit and an eye-glass, and
the other in a large violet hat, a diamond necklace, and a yellow satin
skirt. The which customers, seemingly well used to the sight of drunken
waiters tottering to and fro with towers of plates, sat down at a table
and waited calmly for attention.  The popular audience, with that quick
mental grasp for which popular audiences are so renowned, soon perceived
that the table was in close proximity to a lofty sideboard, and that on
either hand of the sideboard were two chairs, upon which the two waiters
were trying to climb in order to deposit their plates on the top-most
shelf of the sideboard.  The waiters successfully mounted the chairs,
and successfully lifted their towers of plates to within half an inch of
the desired shelf, and then the chairs began to show signs of
insecurity.  By this time the audience was stimulated to an ecstasy of
expectation, whose painfulness was only equalled by its extreme
delectability.  The sole unmoved persons in the building were the
customers awaiting attention at the restaurant table.

One tower was safely lodged on the shelf.  But was it?  It was not!
Yes?  No!  It curved; it straightened; it curved again.  The excitement
was as keen as that of watching a drowning man attempt to reach the
shore.  It was simply excruciating.  It could not be borne any longer,
and when it could not be borne any longer, the tower sprawled
irrevocably, and seven dozen plates fell in a cascade on the violet hat,
and so, with an inconceivable clatter, to the floor.  Almost at the same
moment the being in the dress suit and the eye-glass--becoming aware of
the phenomena--slightly unusual even in a restaurant, dropped his
eye-glass, turned round to the sideboard, and received the other
waiter’s seven dozen plates in the face and on the crown of his head.

No such effect had ever been seen in the Five Towns, and the felicity of
the audience exceeded all previous felicities.  The audience yelled,
roared, shrieked, gasped, trembled, and punched itself in a furious
passion of pleasure.  They make plates in the Five Towns.  They live by
making plates. They understand plates.  In the Five Towns a man will
carry not seven but twenty-seven dozen plates on a swaying plank for
eight hours a day, up steps and down steps, and in doorways and out of
doorways, and not break one plate in seven years!  Judge, therefore, the
simple but terrific satisfaction of a Five Towns’ audience in the
hugeness of the calamity.  Moreover, every plate smashed means a demand
for a new plate and increased prosperity for the Five Towns.  The
grateful crowd in the auditorium of the Empire would have covered the
stage with wreaths if it had known that wreaths were used for other
occasions than funerals; which it did not know.

Fresh complications instantly ensued which cruelly cut short the
agreeable exercise of uncontrolled laughter.  It was obvious that one of
the waiters was about to fall.  And in the enforced tranquillity of a
new dread, every dyspeptic person in the house was deliciously conscious
of a sudden freedom from indigestion, due to the agreeable exercise of
uncontrolled laughter, and wished fervently that he could laugh like
that after every meal. The waiter fell; he fell through the large violet
hat and disappeared beneath the surface of a sea of crockery.  The other
waiter fell too, but the sea was not deep enough to drown a couple of
them. Then the customers, recovering themselves, decided that they must
not be outclassed in this competition of havoc, and they overthrew the
table and everything on it, and all the other tables, and everything on
all the other tables.  The audience was now a field of artillery which
nothing could silence.  The waiters arose, and, opening the sideboard,
disclosed many hundreds of unsuspected plates of all kinds, ripe for
smashing.  Niagaras of plates surged on to the stage.  All four
performers revelled and wallowed in smashed plates.  New supplies of
plates were constantly being produced from strange concealments, and
finally the tables and chairs were broken to pieces, and each object on
the walls was torn down and flung in bits on to the gorgeous general
debris, to the top of which clambered the violet hat, necklace, and
yellow petticoat, brandishing one single little plate, whose life had
been miraculously spared.  Shrieks of joy in that little plate played
over the din like lightning in a thunder-storm.  And the curtain fell.

It was rung up fifteen times, and fifteen times the quartette of
artists, breathless, bowed in acknowledgment of the frenzied and
boisterous testimony to their unique talents.  No singer, no tragedian,
no comedian, no wit, could have had such a triumph, could have given
such intense pleasure.  And yet none of the four had spoken a word.
Such is genius!

At the end of the fifteenth call the stage-manager came before the
curtain and guaranteed that two thousand four hundred plates had been
broken.

The lights went up.  Strong men were seen to be wiping tears from their
eyes.  Complete strangers were seen addressing each other in the manner
of old friends.  Such is art!

"Well, that was worth a bob, that was!" muttered Edward Henry to
himself.  And it was. Edward Henry had not escaped the general fate.
Nobody, being present, could have escaped it.  He was enchanted.  He had
utterly forgotten every care.

"Good evening, Mr. Machin," said a voice at his side.  Not only he
turned, but nearly every one in the vicinity turned.  The voice was the
voice of the stout and splendid managing director of the Empire, and it
sounded with the ring of authority above the rising tinkle of the bar
behind the Grand Circle.

"Oh!  How d’ye do, Mr. Dakins?" Edward Henry held out a cordial hand,
for even the greatest men are pleased to be greeted in a place of
entertainment by the managing director thereof.  Further, his identity
was now recognised.

"Haven’t you seen those gentlemen in that box beckoning to you?" said
Mr. Dakins, proudly deprecating complimentary remarks on the show.

"Which box?"

Mr. Dakins’ hand indicated the stage-box.  And Henry, looking, saw three
men, one unknown to him; the second, Robert Brindley, the architect, of
Bursley; and the third, Dr. Stirling.

Instantly his conscience leapt up within him.  He thought of rabies.
Yes, sobered in the fraction of a second, he thought of rabies.
Supposing that, after all, in spite of Mr. Long’s muzzling order, as
cited by his infant son, an odd case of rabies should have lingered in
the British Isles, and supposing that Carlo had been infected!  Not
impossible!  Was it providential that Dr. Stirling was in the
auditorium?

"You know two of them?" said Mr. Dakins.

"Yes."

"Well, the third’s a Mr. Bryany.  He’s manager to Mr. Seven Sachs."  Mr.
Dakins’ tone was respectful.

"And who’s Mr. Seven Sachs?" asked Edward Henry absently.  It was a
stupid question.

He was impressively informed that Mr. Seven Sachs was the arch-famous
American actor-playwright, now nearing the end of a provincial tour
which had surpassed all records of provincial tours, and that he would
be at the Theatre Royal, Hanbridge, next week.  Edward Henry then
remembered that the hoardings had been full of Mr. Seven Sachs for some
time past.

"They keep on making signs to you," said Mr. Dakins, referring to the
occupants of the stage-box.

Edward Henry waved a reply to the box.

"Here!  I’ll take you there the shortest way," said Mr. Dakins.



                                  II.


"Welcome to Stirling’s box, Machin!" Robert Brindley greeted the
alderman with an almost imperceptible wink.  Edward Henry had
encountered this wink once or twice before; he could not decide
precisely what it meant; it was apt to make him reflective. He did not
dislike Robert Brindley, his habit was not to dislike people; he
admitted Brindley to be a clever architect, though he objected to the
"modern" style of the fronts of his houses and schools. But he did take
exception to the man’s attitude towards the Five Towns, of which, by the
way, Brindley was just as much a native as himself.  Brindley seemed to
live in the Five Towns like a highly cultured stranger in a savage land,
and to derive rather too much sardonic amusement from the spectacle of
existence therein.  Brindley was a very special crony of Stirling’s, and
had influenced Stirling.  But Stirling was too clever to submit unduly
to the influence.  Besides, Stirling was not a native; he was only a
Scotchman, and Edward Henry considered that what Stirling thought of the
district did not matter.  Other details about Brindley which Edward
Henry deprecated were his necktie, which, for Edward Henry’s taste, was
too flowing, his scorn of the "Pianisto" (despite the man’s tremendous
interest in music), and his incipient madness on the subject of books--a
madness shared by Stirling.  Brindley and the doctor were forever
chattering about books, and buying them.

So that, on the whole, Dr. Stirling’s box was not a place where Edward
Henry felt entirely at home. Nevertheless, the two men, having presented
Mr. Bryany, did their best, each in his own way, to make him feel at
home.

"Take this chair, Machin," said Stirling, indicating a chair at the
front.

"Oh, I can’t take the front chair!" Edward Henry protested.

"Of course you can, my dear Machin," said Brindley sharply.  "The front
chair in a stage-box is the one proper seat in the house for you.  Do as
your doctor prescribes."

And Edward Henry accordingly sat down at the front, with Mr. Bryany by
his side; and the other two sat behind.  But Edward Henry was not quite
comfortable.  He faintly resented that speech of Brindley’s.  And yet he
did feel that what Brindley had said was true, and he was indeed glad to
be in the front chair of a brilliant stage-box on the grand tier,
instead of being packed away in the nethermost twilight of the Grand
Circle.  He wondered how Brindley and Stirling had managed to
distinguish his face among the confusion of faces in that distant
obscurity; he, Edward Henry, had failed to notice them, even in the
prominence of their box.  But that they had distinguished him showed how
familiar and striking a figure he was.  He wondered, too, why they
should have invited him to hobnob with them.  He was not of their set.
Indeed, like many very eminent men, he was not to any degree in
anybody’s set.  Of one thing he was sure,--because he had read it on the
self-conscious faces of all three of them,--namely, that they had been
discussing him.  Possibly he had been brought up for Mr. Bryany’s
inspection as a major lion and character of the district.  Well, he did
not mind that; nay, he enjoyed that.  He could feel Mr. Bryany covertly
looking him over.  And he thought: "Look, my boy!  I make no charge."
He smiled and nodded to one or two people who with pride saluted him
from the stalls.  It was meet that he should be visible there on that
Friday night!

"A full house!" he observed, to break the rather awkward silence of the
box, as he glanced round at the magnificent smoke-veiled pageant of the
aristocracy and the democracy of the Five Towns crowded together, tier
above gilded tier, up to the dim roof where ragged lads and maids
giggled and flirted while waiting for the broken plates to be cleared
away and the moving pictures to begin.

"You may say it!" agreed Mr. Bryany, who spoke with a very slight
American accent. "Dakins positively hadn’t a seat to offer me.  I
happened to have the evening free.  It isn’t often I do have a free
evening.  And so I thought I’d pop in here.  But if Dakins hadn’t
introduced me to these gentlemen, my seat would have had to be a
standing one."

"So that’s how they got to know him, is it?" thought Edward Henry.

And then there was another short silence.

"Hear you’ve been doing something striking in rubber shares, Machin?"
said Brindley at length.

Astonishing how these things got abroad!

"Oh, very little, very little!" Edward Henry laughed modestly.  "Too
late to do much!  In another fortnight the bottom will be all out of the
rubber market!"

"Of course I’m an Englishman--" Mr. Bryany began.

"Why ’of course’?" Edward Henry interrupted him.

"Hear!  Hear!  Alderman.  Why ’of course’?" said Brindley approvingly,
and Stirling’s rich laugh was heard.  "Only it does just happen,"
Brindley added, "that Mr. Bryany did us the honour to be born in the
district."

"Yes.  Longshaw," Mr. Bryany admitted, half proud and half apologetic,
"which I left at the age of two."

"Oh, Longshaw!" murmured Edward Henry with a peculiar inflection, which
had a distinct meaning for at least two of his auditors.

Longshaw is at the opposite end of the Five Towns from Bursley, and the
majority of the inhabitants of Bursley have never been to Longshaw in
their lives, have only heard of it, as they hear of Chicago or Bangkok.
Edward Henry had often been to Longshaw, but, like every visitor from
Bursley, he instinctively regarded it as a foolish and unnecessary
place.

"As I was saying," resumed Mr. Bryany, quite unintimidated, "I’m an
Englishman.  But I’ve lived eighteen years in America, and it seems to
me the bottom will soon be knocked out of pretty nearly all the markets
in England.  Look at the Five Towns!"

"No, don’t, Mr. Bryany!" said Brindley. "Don’t go to extremes."

"Personally, I don’t mind looking at the Five Towns," said Edward Henry.
"What of it?"

"Well, did you ever see such people for looking twice at a five-pound
note?"

Edward Henry most certainly did not like this aspersion on his native
district.  He gazed in silence at Mr. Bryany’s brassy and yet simple
face, and did not like the face either.

And Mr. Bryany, beautifully unaware that he had failed in tact,
continued: "The Five Towns is the most English place I’ve ever seen,
believe me!  Of course it has its good points, and England has her good
points; but there’s no money stirring.  There’s no field for speculation
on the spot, and as for outside investment, no Englishman will touch
anything that really is good."  He emphasised the last three words.

"What d’ye do yeself, Mr. Bryany?" inquired Dr. Stirling.

"What do I do with my little bit?" cried Mr. Bryany.  "Oh, I know what
to do with my little bit.  I can get ten per cent. in Seattle, and
twelve to fifteen in Calgary, on my little bit; and security just as
good as English railway stock--_and_ better."

The theatre was darkened, and the cinematograph began its reckless
twinkling.

Mr. Bryany went on offering to Edward Henry, in a suitably lowered
voice, his views on the great questions of investment and speculation;
and Edward Henry made cautious replies.

"And even when there is a good thing going at home," Mr. Bryany said, in
a wounded tone, "what Englishman’d look at it?"

"I would," said Edward Henry with a blandness that was only skin-deep,
for all the time he was cogitating the question whether the presence of
Dr. Stirling in the audience ought or ought not to be regarded as
providential.

"Now, I’ve got the option on a little affair in London," said Mr.
Bryany, while Edward Henry glanced quickly at him in the darkness, "and
can I get anybody to go into it?  I can’t."

"What sort of a little affair?"

"Building a theatre in the West End."

Even a less impassive man than Edward Henry would have started at the
coincidence of this remark.  And Edward Henry started.  Twenty minutes
ago he had been idly dreaming of theatrical speculation, and now he
could almost see theatrical speculation shimmering before him in the
pale shifting rays of the cinematograph that cut through the gloom of
the mysterious auditorium.

"Oh!" And in this new interest he forgot the enigma of the ways of
Providence.

"Of course, you know, I’m in the business," said Mr. Bryany.  "I’m Seven
Sachs’s manager."  It was as if he owned and operated Mr. Seven Sachs.

"So I heard," said Edward Henry, and then remarked with mischievous
cordiality: "And I suppose these chaps told you I was the sort of man
you were after.  And you got them to ask me in, eh, Mr. Bryany?"

Mr. Bryany gave an uneasy laugh, but seemed to find naught to say.

"Well, what is your little affair?" Edward Henry encouraged him.

"Oh, I can’t tell you now," said Mr. Bryany. "It would take too long.
The thing has to be explained."

"Well, what about to-morrow?"

"I have to leave for London by the first train in the morning."

"Well, some other time?"

"After to-morrow will be too late."

"Well, what about to-night?"

"The fact is, I’ve half promised to go with Dr. Stirling to some club or
other after the show. Otherwise we might have had a quiet confidential
chat in my rooms over the Turk’s Head.  I never dreamt--"  Mr. Bryany
was now as melancholy as a greedy lad who regards rich fruit at arm’s
length through a plate-glass window, and he had ceased to be
patronising.

"I’ll soon get rid of Stirling for you," said Edward Henry, turning
instantly towards the doctor. The ways of Providence had been made plain
to Edward Henry.  "I say, Doc!"  But the Doctor and Brindley were in
conversation with another man at the open door of the box.

"What is it?" said Stirling.

"I’ve come to fetch you.  You’re wanted at my place."

"Well, you’re a caution!" said Stirling.

"Why am I a caution?" Edward Henry smoothly protested.  "I didn’t tell
you before because I didn’t want to spoil your fun."

Stirling’s mien was not happy.

"Did they tell you I was here?" he asked.

"You’d almost think so, wouldn’t you?" said Edward Henry in a playful,
enigmatic tone.  After all, he decided privately, his wife was right: it
was better that Stirling should see the infant.  And there was also this
natural human thought in his mind: he objected to the doctor giving an
entire evening to diversions away from home; he considered that a
doctor, when not on a round of visits, ought to be forever in his
consulting-room, ready for a sudden call of emergency.  It was monstrous
that Stirling should have proposed, after an escapade at the music-hall,
to spend further hours with chance acquaintances in vague clubs!  Half
the town might fall sick and die while the doctor was vainly amusing
himself.  Thus the righteous layman in Edward Henry!

"What’s the matter?" asked Stirling.

"My eldest’s been rather badly bitten by a dog, and the missis wants it
cauterized."

"Really?"

"Well, you bet she does!"

"Where’s the bite?"

"In the calf."

The other man at the door having departed, Robert Brindley abruptly
joined the conversation at this point.

"I suppose you’ve heard of that case of hydrophobia at Bleakridge?" said
Brindley.

Edward Henry’s heart jumped.

"No, I haven’t," he said anxiously.  "What is it?"

He gazed at the white blur of Brindley’s face in the darkened box, and
he could hear the rapid clicking of the cinematograph behind him.

"Didn’t you see it in the _Signal_?"

"No."

"Neither did I," said Brindley.

At the same moment the moving pictures came to an end, the theatre was
filled with light, and the band began to play, "God Save the King."
Brindley and Stirling were laughing.  And indeed, Brindley had scored,
this time, over the unparalleled card of the Five Towns.

"I make you a present of that," said Edward Henry.  "But my wife’s most
precious infant has to be cauterized, Doctor," he added firmly.

"Got your car here?" Stirling questioned.

"No.  Have you?"

"No."

"Well, there’s the tram.  I’ll follow you later. I’ve some business
round this way.  Persuade my wife not to worry, will you?"

And when a discontented Dr. Stirling had made his excuses and adieux to
Mr. Bryany, and Robert Brindley had decided that he could not leave his
crony to travel by tram-car alone, and the two men had gone, then Edward
Henry turned to Mr. Bryany:

"That’s how I get rid of the doctor, you see."

"But _has_ your child been bitten by a dog?" asked Mr. Bryany, acutely
perplexed.

"You’d almost think so, wouldn’t you?" Edward Henry replied, carefully
non-committal.  "What price going to the Turk’s Head now?"

He remembered with satisfaction, and yet with misgiving, a remark made
to him, a judgment passed on him, by a very old woman very many years
before.  This discerning hag, the Widow Hullins by name, had said to him
briefly, "Well, you’re a queer ’un!"



                                  III.


Within five minutes he was following Mr. Bryany into a small parlour on
the first floor of the Turk’s Head, a room with which he had no previous
acquaintance, though, like most industrious men of affairs in
metropolitan Hanbridge, he reckoned to know something about the Turk’s
Head.  Mr. Bryany turned up the gas (the Turk’s Head took pride in being
a "hostelry," and, while it had accustomed itself to incandescent
mantles on the ground floor, it had not yet conquered a natural distaste
for electricity) and Edward Henry saw a smart despatch-box, a dress
suit, a trouser-stretcher, and other necessaries of theatrical business
life at large in the apartment.

"I’ve never seen this room before," said Edward Henry.

"Take your overcoat off and sit down, will you?" said Mr. Bryany as he
turned to replenish the fire from a bucket.  "It’s my private
sitting-room. Whenever I am on my travels, I always take a private
sitting-room.  It pays, you know.  Of course I mean if I’m alone.  When
I’m looking after Mr. Sachs, of course we share a sitting-room."

Edward Henry agreed lightly:

"I suppose so."

But the fact was that he was much impressed. He himself had never taken
a private sitting-room in any hotel.  He had sometimes felt the desire,
but he had not had the "face," as they say down there, to do it.  To
take a private sitting-room in a hotel was generally regarded in the
Five Towns as the very summit of dashing expensiveness and futile
luxury.

"I didn’t know they had private sitting-rooms in this shanty," said
Edward Henry.

Mr. Bryany, having finished with the fire, fronted him, shovel in hand,
with a remarkable air of consummate wisdom, and replied:

"You can generally get what you want if you insist on having it, even in
this ’shanty.’"

Edward Henry regretted his use of the word "shanty."  Inhabitants of the
Five Towns may allow themselves to twit the historic and excellent
Turk’s Head, but they do not extend the privilege to strangers.  And in
justice to the Turk’s Head, it is to be clearly stated that it did no
more to cow and discourage travellers than any other provincial hotel in
England.  It was a sound and serious English provincial hotel; and it
linked century to century.

Said Mr. Bryany:

"’Merica’s the place for hotels."

"Yes, I expect it is."

"Been to Chicago?"

"No, I haven’t."

Mr. Bryany, as he removed his overcoat, could be seen politely
forbearing to raise his eyebrows.

"Of course you’ve been to New York?"

Edward Henry would have given all he had in his pockets to be able to
say that he had been to New York, but, by some inexplicable negligence,
he had hitherto omitted to go to New York, and, being a truthful person,
except in the gravest crises, he was obliged to answer miserably:

"No, I haven’t."

Mr. Bryany gazed at him with amazement and compassion, apparently
staggered by the discovery that there existed in England a man of the
world who had contrived to struggle on for forty years without
perfecting his education by a visit to New York.

Edward Henry could not tolerate Mr. Bryany’s look.  It was a look which
he had never been able to tolerate on the features of anybody
whatsoever. He reminded himself that his secret object in accompanying
Mr. Bryany to the Turk’s Head was to repay Mr. Bryany--in what coin he
knew not yet--for the aspersions which at the music-hall he had cast
upon England in general and upon the Five Towns in particular, and also
to get revenge for having been tricked into believing, even for a
moment, that there was really a case of hydrophobia at Bleakridge.  It
is true that Mr. Bryany was innocent of this deception, which had been
accomplished by Robert Brindley, but that was a detail which did not
trouble Edward Henry, who lumped his grievances together--for
convenience.

He had been reflecting that some sentimental people, unused to the ways
of paternal affection in the Five Towns, might consider him a rather
callous father; he had been reflecting, again, that Nellie’s suggestion
of blood-poisoning might not be as entirely foolish as feminine
suggestions in such circumstances too often are.  But now he put these
thoughts away, reassuring himself against hydrophobia anyhow, by the
recollection of the definite statement of the Encyclopedia.  Moreover,
had he not inspected the wound--as healthy a wound as you could wish
for?

And he said in a new tone, very curtly:

"Now, Mr. Bryany, what about this little affair of yours?"

He saw that Mr. Bryany accepted the implied rebuke with the deference
properly shown by a man who needs something towards the man in
possession of what he needs.  And studying the fellow’s countenance, he
decided that, despite its brassiness and simple cunning, it was scarcely
the countenance of a rascal.

"Well, it’s like this," said Mr. Bryany, sitting down opposite Edward
Henry at the centre table, and reaching with obsequious liveliness for
the despatch-box.

He drew from the despatch-box, which was lettered "W.C.B.," first a
cut-glass flask of whisky, with a patent stopper, and then a spacious
box of cigarettes.

"I always travel with the right sort," he remarked, holding the golden
liquid up to the light. "It’s safer, and it saves any trouble with
orders after closing-time.  These English hotels, you know--!"

So saying, he dispensed whisky and cigarettes, there being a siphon and
glasses, and three matches in a match-stand, on the table.

"Here’s looking!" he said, with raised glass.

And Edward Henry responded, in conformity with the changeless ritual of
the Five Towns:

"I looks!"

And they sipped.

Whereupon Mr. Bryany next drew from the despatch-box a piece of
transparent paper.

"I want you to look at this plan of Piccadilly Circus and environs,"
said he.

Now there is a Piccadilly in Hanbridge; also a Pall Mall, and a Chancery
Lane.  The adjective "metropolitan," applied to Hanbridge is just.

"London?" questioned Edward Henry.  "I understood London when we were
chatting over there."  With his elbow he indicated the music-hall,
somewhere vaguely outside the room.

"London," said Mr. Bryany.

And Edward Henry thought:

"What on earth am I meddling with London for? What use should I be in
London?"

"You see the plot marked in red?" Mr. Bryany proceeded.  "Well, that’s
the site.  There’s an old chapel on it now."

"What do all these straight lines mean?" Edward Henry inquired,
examining the plan.  Lines radiated from the red plot in various
directions.

"Those are the lines of vision," said Mr. Bryany. "They show just where
an electric sign at the corner of the front of the proposed theatre
could be seen from.  You notice the site is not in the Circus itself--a
shade to the north."   Mr. Bryany’s finger approached Edward Henry’s on
the plan and the clouds from their cigarettes fraternally mingled.  "Now
you see by those lines that the electric sign of the proposed theatre
would be visible from nearly the whole of Piccadilly Circus, parts of
Lower Regent Street, Coventry Street, and even Shaftesbury Avenue.  You
see what a site it is--absolutely unique."

Edward Henry asked coldly:

"Have you bought it?"

"No," Mr. Bryany seemed to apologise, "I haven’t exactly bought it; but
I’ve got an option on it."

The magic word "option" wakened the drowsy speculator in Edward Henry.
And the mere act of looking at the plan endowed the plot of land with
reality.  There it was.  It existed.

"An option to buy it?"

"You can’t buy land in the West End of London," said Mr. Bryany sagely.
"You can only lease it."

"Well, of course," Edward Henry concurred.

"The freehold belongs to Lord Woldo, now aged six months."

"Really!" murmured Edward Henry.

"I’ve got an option to take up the remainder of the lease, with
sixty-four years to run, on the condition I put up a theatre.  And the
option expires in exactly a fortnight’s time."

Edward Henry frowned, and then asked:

"What are the figures?"

"That is to say," Mr. Bryany corrected himself, smiling courteously,
"I’ve got half the option."

"And who’s got the other half?"

"Rose Euclid’s got the other half."

At the mention of the name of one of the most renowned star actresses in
England, Edward Henry excusably started.

"Not _the_--?" he exclaimed.

Mr. Bryany nodded proudly, blowing out much smoke.

"Tell me," asked Edward Henry, confidentially, leaning forward, "where
do those ladies get their names from?"

"It happens in this case to be her real name," said Mr. Bryany.  "Her
father kept a tobacconists’ shop in Cheapside.  The sign was kept up for
many years, until Rose paid to have it changed."

"Well, well!" breathed Edward Henry, secretly thrilled by these
extraordinary revelations.  "And so you and she have got it between
you?"

Mr. Bryany said:

"I bought half of it from her some time ago. She was badly hard up for a
hundred pounds, and I let her have the money."  He threw away his
cigarette half-smoked, with a free gesture that seemed to imply that he
was capable of parting with a hundred pounds just as easily.

"How did she _get_ the option?" Edward Henry inquired, putting into the
query all the innuendo of a man accustomed to look at great worldly
affairs from the inside.

"How did she get it?  She got it from the late Lord Woldo.  She was
always very friendly with the late Lord Woldo, you know."  Edward Henry
nodded.  "Why, she and the Countess of Chell are as thick as thieves!
You know something about the countess down here, I reckon?"

The Countess of Chell was the wife of the supreme local magnate.

Edward Henry answered calmly, "We do."

He was tempted to relate a unique adventure of his youth, when he had
driven the countess to a public meeting in his mule-carriage; but sheer
pride kept him silent.

"I asked you for the figures," he added in a manner which requested Mr.
Bryany to remember that he was the founder, chairman, and proprietor of
the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, one of the most successful
business organisations in the Midlands.

"Here they are," said Mr. Bryany, passing across the table a sheet of
paper.

And as Edward Henry studied them he could hear Mr. Bryany faintly cooing
into his ear: "Of course Rose got the ground-rent reduced.  And when I
tell you that the demand for theatres in the West End far exceeds the
supply, and that theatre rents are always going up; when I tell you that
a theatre costing £25,000 to build can be let for £11,000 a year, and
often £300 a week on a short term--"  And he could hear the gas singing
over his head; and also, unhappily, he could hear Dr. Stirling talking
to his wife and saying to her that the bite was far more serious than it
looked, and Nellie hoping very audibly that nothing had "happened" to
him, her still absent husband.  And then he could hear Mr. Bryany again:

"When I tell you--"

"When you tell me all this, Mr. Bryany," he interrupted with the
ferocity which in the Five Towns is regarded as mere directness, "I
wonder why the devil you want to sell your half of the option if you
_do_ want to sell it.  Do you want to sell it?"

"To tell you the truth," said Mr. Bryany as if up to that moment he had
told naught but lies, "I do."

"Why?"

"Oh, I’m always travelling about, you see. England one day, America the
next."  Apparently he had quickly abandoned the strictness of veracity.
"All depends on the governor’s movements.  I couldn’t keep a proper eye
on an affair of that kind."

Edward Henry laughed:

"And could I?"

"Chance for you to go a bit oftener to London," said Mr. Bryany,
laughing too.  Then, with extreme and convincing seriousness, "You’re
the very man for a thing of that kind.  And you know it."

Edward Henry was not displeased by this flattery.

"How much?"

"How much?  Well, I told you frankly what I paid.  I made no concealment
of that, did I now? Well, I want what I paid.  It’s worth it!"

"Got a copy of the option, I hope!"

Mr. Bryany produced a copy of the option.

"I am nothing but an infernal ass to mix myself up in a mad scheme like
this," said Edward Henry to his soul, perusing the documents.  "It’s
right off my line, right bang off it.  But what a lark!"  But even to
his soul he did not utter the remainder of the truth about himself,
namely, "I should like to cut a dash before this insufferable patroniser
of England and the Five Towns."

Suddenly something snapped within him, and he said to Mr. Bryany:

"I’m on!"

Those words and no more!

"You are?" Mr. Bryany exclaimed, mistrusting his ears.

Edward Henry nodded.

"Well, that’s business anyway," said Mr. Bryany, taking a fresh
cigarette and lighting it.

"It’s how we do business down here," said Edward Henry, quite
inaccurately; for it was not in the least how they did business down
there.

Mr. Bryany asked, with a rather obvious anxiety:

"But when can you pay?

"Oh, I’ll send you a cheque in a day or two."  And Edward Henry in his
turn took a fresh cigarette.

"That won’t do!  That won’t do!" cried Mr. Bryany. "I absolutely must
have the money to-morrow morning in London.  I can sell the option in
London for eighty pounds, I know that."

"You must have it?"

"Must!"

They exchanged glances.  And Edward Henry, rapidly acquiring new
knowledge of human nature on the threshold of a world strange to him,
understood that Mr. Bryany, with his private sitting-room and his
investments in Seattle and Calgary, was at his wits’ end for a bag of
English sovereigns, and had trusted to some chance encounter to save him
from a calamity.  And his contempt for Mr. Bryany was that of a man to
whom his bankers are positively servile.

"Here," Mr. Bryany almost shouted, "don’t light your cigarette with my
option!"

"I beg pardon," Edward Henry apologised, dropping the document which he
had creased into a spill.  There were no matches left on the table.

"I’ll find you a match."

"It’s of no consequence," said Edward Henry, feeling in his pockets.
Having discovered therein a piece of paper, he twisted it and rose to
put it to the gas.

"Could you slip round to your bank and meet me at the station in the
morning with the cash?" suggested Mr. Bryany.

"No, I couldn’t," said Edward Henry.

"Well, then, what--?"

"Here, you’d better take this," the Card, reborn, soothed his host, and,
blowing out the spill which he had just ignited at the gas, he offered
it to Mr. Bryany.

"What?"

"This, man!"

Mr. Bryany, observing the peculiarity of the spill, seized it and
unrolled it, not without a certain agitation.

He stammered:

"Do you mean to say it’s genuine?"

"You’d almost think so, wouldn’t you?" said Edward Henry.  He was
growing fond of this reply, and of the enigmatic playful tone that he
had invented for it.

"But--"

"We may, as you say, look twice at a fiver," continued Edward Henry,
"but we’re apt to be careless about hundred-pound notes in this
district.  I daresay that’s why I always carry one."

"But it’s burnt!"

"Only just the edge, not enough to harm it.  If any bank in England
refuses it, return it to me, and I’ll give you a couple more in
exchange.  Is that talking?"

"Well, I’m dashed!"  Mr. Bryany attempted to rise, and then subsided
back into his chair.  "I am simply and totally dashed!"  He smiled
weakly, hysterically.

And in that instant Edward Henry felt all the sweetness of a complete
and luscious revenge.

He said commandingly:

"You must sign me a transfer.  I’ll dictate it."

Then he jumped up.

"You’re in a hurry?"

"I am.  My wife is expecting me.  You promised to find me a match."
Edward Henry waved the unlit cigarette as a reproach to Mr. Bryany’s
imperfect hospitality.



                                  IV.


The clock of Bleakridge Church, still imperturbably shining in the
night, showed a quarter to one when he saw it again on his hurried and
guilty way home.  The pavements were drying in the fresh night wind, and
he had his overcoat buttoned up to the neck.  He was absolutely solitary
in the long, muddy perspective of Trafalgar Road.  He walked because the
last tram-car was already housed in its shed at the other end of the
world, and he walked quickly because his conscience drove him onwards.
And yet he dreaded to arrive, lest a wound in the child’s leg should
have maliciously decided to fester in order to put him in the wrong.  He
was now as apprehensive concerning that wound as Nellie herself had been
at tea-time.

But in his mind, above the dark gulf of anxiety, there floated brighter
thoughts.  Despite his fears and his remorse as a father, he laughed
aloud in the deserted street when he remembered Mr. Bryany’s visage of
astonishment upon uncreasing the note.  Indubitably, he made a terrific
and everlasting impression upon Mr. Bryany.  He was sending Mr. Bryany
out of the Five Towns a different man. He had taught Mr. Bryany a thing
or two.  To what brilliant use had he turned the purely accidental
possession of a hundred-pound note!  One of his finest inspirations--an
inspiration worthy of the great days of his youth!  Yes, he had had his
hour that evening, and it had been a glorious one. Also, it had cost him
a hundred pounds, and he did not care; he would retire to bed with a net
gain of two hundred and forty-one pounds instead of three hundred and
forty-one pounds, that was all.

For he did not mean to take up the option.  The ecstasy was cooled now,
and he saw clearly that London and theatrical enterprises therein would
not be suited to his genius.  In the Five Towns he was on his own
ground; he was a figure; he was sure of himself.  In London he would be
a provincial, with the diffidence and the uncertainty of a provincial.
Nevertheless, London seemed to be summoning him from afar off, and he
dreamt agreeably of London as one dreams of the impossible East.

As soon as he opened the gate in the wall of his property, he saw that
the drawing-room was illuminated and all the other front rooms in
darkness. Either his wife or his mother, then, was sitting up in the
drawing-room.  He inserted a cautious latch-key into the door, and
entered the silent home like a sinner.  The dim light in the hall
gravely reproached him.  All his movements were modest and restrained;
no noisy rattling of his stick now.

The drawing-room door was slightly ajar.  He hesitated, and then,
nerving himself, pushed against it.

Nellie, with lowered head, was seated at a table, mending, the image of
tranquillity and soft resignation. A pile of children’s garments lay by
her side, but the article in her busy hands appeared to be an undershirt
of his own.  None but she ever reinforced the buttons on his linen.
Such was her wifely rule, and he considered that there was no sense in
it.  She was working by the light of a single lamp on the table, the
splendid chandelier being out of action.  Her economy in the use of
electricity was incurable, and he considered that there was no sense in
that either.

She glanced up with a guarded expression that might have meant anything.

He said:

"Aren’t you trying your eyes?"

And she replied:

"Oh, no!"

Then, plunging, he came to the point:

"Well, doctor been here?"

She nodded.

"What does he say?"

"It’s quite all right.  He did nothing but cover up the place with a bit
of cyanide gauze."

Instantly, in his own esteem, he regained perfection as a father.  Of
course the bite was nothing! Had he not said so from the first?  Had he
not been quite sure throughout that the bite was nothing?

"Then why did you sit up?" he asked, and there was a faint righteous
challenge in his tone.

"I was anxious about you.  I was afraid--"

"Didn’t Stirling tell you I had some business?"

"I forget--"

"I told him to, anyhow--important business."

"It must have been," said Nellie in an inscrutable voice.

She rose and gathered together her paraphernalia, and he saw that she
was wearing the damnable white apron.  The close atmosphere of the home
enveloped and stifled him once more.  How different was this
exasperating interior from the large jolly freedom of the Empire Music
Hall, and from the whisky, cigarettes, and masculinity of that private
room at the Turk’s Head!

"It was!" he repeated grimly and resentfully. "Very important!  And I’ll
tell you another thing, I shall probably have to go to London."

He said this just to startle her.

"It will do you all the good in the world," she replied angelically, but
unstartled.  "It’s just what you need."  And she gazed at him as though
his welfare and felicity were her sole preoccupation.

"I meant I might have to stop there quite a while," he insisted.

"If you ask me," she said, "I think it would do us all good."

So saying she retired, having expressed no curiosity whatever as to the
nature of the very important business in London.

For a moment, left alone, he was at a loss.  Then, snorting, he went to
the table and extinguished the lamp.  He was now in darkness.  The light
in the hall showed him the position of the door.

He snorted again.  "Oh, very well then!" he muttered.  "If that’s it!
I’m hanged if I don’t go to London!  I’m hanged if I don’t go to
London!"




                              CHAPTER III

                               WILKINS’S

                                   I.

The early adventures of Alderman Machin of Bursley at Wilkins’ Hotel,
London, were so singular and to him so refreshing that they must be
recounted in some detail.

He went to London by the morning express from Knype, on the Monday week
after his visit to the music-hall.  In the meantime he had had some
correspondence with Mr. Bryany, more poetic than precise, about the
option, and had informed Mr. Bryany that he would arrive in London
several days before the option expired.  But he had not given a definite
date.  The whole affair, indeed, was amusingly vague; and, despite his
assurances to his wife that the matter was momentous, he did not regard
his trip to London as a business trip at all, but rather as a simple
freakish change of air.  The one certain item in the whole situation was
that he had in his pocket a quite considerable sum of actual money,
destined--he hoped but was not sure--to take up the option at the proper
hour.

Nellie, impeccable to the last, accompanied him in the motor to Knype,
the main-line station.  The drive, superficially pleasant, was in
reality very disconcerting to him.  For nine days the household had
talked in apparent cheerfulness of Father’s visit to London, as though
it were an occasion for joy on Father’s behalf, tempered by affectionate
sorrow for his absence.  The official theory was that all was for the
best in the best of all possible homes, and this theory was admirably
maintained.  And yet everybody knew--even to Maisie--that it was not so;
everybody knew that the master and the mistress of the home, calm and
sweet as was their demeanour, were contending in a terrific silent and
mysterious altercation, which in some way was connected with the visit
to London.  So far as Edward Henry was concerned, he had been hoping for
some decisive event--a tone, gesture, glance, pressure--during the drive
to Knype, which offered the last chance of a real concord.  No such
event occurred.  They conversed with the same false cordiality as had
marked their relations since the evening of the dog-bite.  On that
evening Nellie had suddenly transformed herself into a distressingly
perfect angel, and not once had she descended from her high estate.  At
least daily she had kissed him--what kisses!  Kisses that were not
kisses!  Tasteless mockeries, like non-alcoholic ale!  He could have
killed her, but he could not put a finger on a fault in her marvellous
wifely behaviour; she would have died victorious.

So that his freakish excursion was not starting very auspiciously.  And,
waiting with her for the train on the platform at Knype, he felt this
more and more.  His old clerk Penkethman was there to receive certain
final instructions on Thrift Club matters, and the sweetness of Nellie’s
attitude towards the ancient man, and the ancient’s man’s naïve pleasure
therein, positively maddened Edward Henry. To such an extent that he
began to think: "Is she going to spoil my trip for me?"

Then Brindley came up.  Brindley, too, was going to London.  And
Nellie’s saccharine assurances to Brindley that Edward Henry really
needed a change just about completed Edward Henry’s desperation.  Not
even the uproarious advent of two jolly wholesale grocers, Messieurs
Garvin and Quorrall, also going to London, could effectually lighten his
pessimism.

When the train steamed in, Edward Henry, in fear, postponed the ultimate
kiss as long as possible.  He allowed Brindley to climb before him into
the second-class compartment, and purposely tarried in finding change
for the porter; and then he turned to Nellie, and stooped.  She raised
her white veil and raised the angelic face.  They kissed,--the same
false kiss,--and she was withdrawing her lips. But suddenly she put them
again to his for one second, with a hysterical clinging pressure.  It
was nothing.  Nobody could have noticed it.  She herself pretended that
she had not done it.  Edward Henry had to pretend not to notice it.  But
to him it was everything.  She had relented.  She had surrendered.  The
sign had come from her.  She wished him to enjoy his visit to London.

He said to himself:

"Dashed if I don’t write to her every day!"

He leaned out of the window as the train rolled away, and waved and
smiled to her, not concealing his sentiments now; nor did she conceal
hers as she replied with exquisite pantomime to his signals. But if the
train had not been rapidly and infallibly separating them, the
reconciliation could scarcely have been thus open.  If for some reason
the train had backed into the station and ejected its passengers, those
two would have covered up their feelings again in an instant.  Such is
human nature in the Five Towns.

When Edward Henry withdrew his head into the compartment, Brindley and
Mr. Garvin, the latter standing at the corridor door, observed that his
spirits had shot up in the most astonishing manner, and in their
blindness they attributed the phenomenon to Edward Henry’s delight in a
temporary freedom from domesticity.

Mr. Garvin had come from the neighbouring compartment, which was
first-class, to suggest a game at bridge.  Messieurs Garvin and Quorrall
journeyed to London once a week and sometimes oftener, and, being
traders, they had special season-tickets.  They travelled first-class
because their special season-tickets were first-class.  Brindley said
that he didn’t mind a game, but that he had not the slightest intention
of paying excess fare for the privilege.  Mr. Garvin told him to come
along and trust in Messieurs Garvin and Quorrall.  Edward Henry, not
nowadays an enthusiastic card-player, enthusiastically agreed to join
the hand, and announced that he did not care if he paid forty excess
fares. Whereupon Robert Brindley grumbled enviously that it was "all
very well for millionaires..."  They followed Mr. Garvin into the
first-class compartment; and it soon appeared that Messrs. Garvin and
Quorrall did in fact own the train, and that the London and North
Western Railway was no more than their wash-pot.

"Bring us a cushion from somewhere, will ye?" said Mr. Quorrall casually
to a ticket-collector who entered.

And the resplendent official obeyed.  The long cushion, rapt from
another compartment, was placed on the knees of the quartette, and the
game began. The ticket-collector examined the tickets of Brindley and
Edward Henry, and somehow failed to notice that they were of the wrong
colour.  And at this proof of their influential greatness, Messieurs
Garvin and Quorrall were both secretly proud.

The last rubber finished in the neighbourhood of Willesden, and Edward
Henry, having won eighteen pence halfpenny, was exuberantly content, for
Messrs. Garvin, Quorrall, and Brindley were all renowned card-players.
The cushion was thrown away, and a fitful conversation occupied the few
remaining minutes of the journey.

"Where do you put up?" Brindley asked Edward Henry.

"Majestic," said Edward Henry.  "Where do you?"

"Oh!  Kingsway, I suppose."

The Majestic and the Kingsway were two of the half-dozen very large and
very mediocre hotels in London which, from causes which nobody, and
especially no American, has ever been able to discover, are particularly
affected by Midland provincials "on the jaunt."  Both had an immense
reputation in the Five Towns.

There was nothing new to say about the Majestic and the Kingsway, and
the talk flagged until Mr. Quorrall mentioned Seven Sachs.  The mighty
Seven Sachs, in his world-famous play, "Overheard," had taken precedence
of all other topics in the Five Towns during the previous week.  He had
crammed the theatre and half emptied the Empire Music Hall for six
nights; a wonderful feat. Incidentally, his fifteen hundredth appearance
in "Overheard" had taken place in the Five Towns, and the Five Towns had
found in this fact a peculiar satisfaction, as though some deep merit
had thereby been acquired or rewarded.  Seven Sachs’s tour was now
closed, and on the Sunday he had gone to London, en route for America.

"I heard _he_ stops at Wilkins’s," said Mr. Garvin.

"Wilkins’s your grandmother!" Brindley essayed to crush Mr. Garvin.

"I don’t say he _does_ stop at Wilkins’s," said Mr. Garvin, an
individual not easy to crush, "I only say I heard as he did."

"They wouldn’t have him!" Brindley insisted firmly.

Mr. Quorrall at any rate seemed tacitly to agree with Brindley.  The
august name of Wilkins’s was in its essence so exclusive that vast
numbers of fairly canny provincials had never heard of it.  Ask ten
well-informed provincials which is the first hotel in London, and nine
of them would certainly reply, the Grand Babylon.  Not that even wealthy
provincials from the industrial districts are in the habit of staying at
the Grand Babylon!  No!  Edward Henry, for example, had never stayed at
the Grand Babylon, no more than he had ever bought a first-class ticket
on a railroad.  The idea of doing so had scarcely occurred to him.
There are certain ways of extravagant smartness which are not considered
to be good form among solid wealthy provincials.  Why travel first-class
(they argue), when second is just as good and no one can tell the
difference once you get out of the train?  Why ape the tricks of another
stratum of society?  They like to read about the dinner-parties and
supper-parties at the Grand Babylon; but they are not emulous, and they
do not imitate.  At their most adventurous they would lunch or dine in
the neutral region of the grill-room at the Grand Babylon.  As for
Wilkins’s, in Devonshire Square, which is infinitely better known among
princes than in the Five Towns, and whose name is affectionately
pronounced with a "V" by half the monarchs of Europe, few industrial
provincials had ever seen it.  The class which is the back-bone of
England left it serenely alone to royalty and the aristocratic parasites
of royalty.

"I don’t see why they shouldn’t have him," said Edward Henry, as he
lifted a challenging nose in the air.

"Perhaps you don’t, Alderman!" said Brindley.

"_I_ wouldn’t mind going to Wilkins’s," Edward Henry persisted.

"I’d like to see you," said Brindley, with curt scorn.

"Well," said Edward Henry, "I’ll bet you a fiver I do."  Had he not won
eighteen pence half-penny?  And was he not securely at peace with his
wife?

"I don’t bet fivers," said the cautious Brindley. "But I’ll bet you half
a crown."

"Done!" said Edward Henry.

"When will you go?"

"Either to-day or to-morrow.  I must go to the Majestic first, because
I’ve ordered a room and so on."

"Ha!" hurled Brindley, as if to insinuate that Edward Henry was seeking
to escape from the consequences of his boast.

And yet he ought to have known Edward Henry. He did know Edward Henry.
And he hoped to lose his half-crown.  On his face and on the faces of
the other two was the cheerful admission that tales of the doings of
Alderman Machin, the great local card, at Wilkins’s--if he succeeded in
getting in--would be cheap at half a crown.

Porters cried out "Euston!"



                                  II.


It was rather late in the afternoon when Edward Henry arrived in front
of the façade of Wilkins’s. He came in a taxicab, and though the
distance from the Majestic to Wilkins’s is not more than a couple of
miles, and he had had nothing else to preoccupy him after lunch, he had
spent some three hours in the business of transferring himself from the
portals of the one hotel to the portals of the other.  Two hours and
three-quarters of this period of time had been passed in finding courage
merely to start. Even so, he had left his luggage behind him.  He said
to himself that, first of all, he would go and spy out Wilkins’s; in the
perilous work of scouting he rightly wished to be unhampered by
impedimenta; moreover, in case of repulse or accident, he must have a
base of operations upon which he could retreat in good order.

He now looked on Wilkins’s for the first time in his life; and he was
even more afraid of it than he had been while thinking about it in the
vestibule of the Majestic.  It was not larger than the Majestic; it was
perhaps smaller; it could not show more terra cotta, plate glass, and
sculptured cornice than the Majestic.  But it had a demeanour ... and it
was in a square which had a demeanour.... In every window-sill--not only
of the hotel, but of nearly every mighty house in the square--there were
boxes of bright-blooming flowers.  These he could plainly distinguish in
the October dusk, and they were a wonderful phenomenon--say what you
will about the mildness of that particular October! A sublime
tranquillity reigned over the scene.  A liveried keeper was locking the
gate of the garden in the middle of the square as if potentates had just
quitted it and rendered it forever sacred.  And between the sacred
shadowed grove and the inscrutable fronts of the stately houses, there
flitted automobiles of the silent and expensive kind, driven by
chauffeurs in pale grey or dark purple, who reclined as they steered,
and who were supported on their left sides by footmen who reclined as
they contemplated the grandeur of existence.

Edward Henry’s taxicab in that square seemed like a homeless cat that
had strayed into a dog-show.

At the exact instant when the taxicab came to rest under the massive
portico of Wilkins’s, a chamberlain in white gloves bravely soiled the
gloves by seizing the vile brass handle of its door.  He bowed to Edward
Henry, and assisted him to alight on to a crimson carpet.  The driver of
the taxi glanced with pert and candid scorn at the chamberlain, but
Edward Henry looked demurely aside, and then in abstraction mounted the
broad carpeted steps.

"What about poor little me?" cried the driver, who was evidently a
ribald socialist, or at best a republican.

The chamberlain, pained, glanced at Edward Henry for support and
direction in this crisis.

"Didn’t I tell you I’d keep you?" said Edward Henry, raised now by the
steps above the driver.

"Between you and me, you didn’t," said the driver.

The chamberlain, with an ineffable gesture, wafted the taxicab away into
some limbo appointed for waiting vehicles.

A page opened a pair of doors, and another page opened another pair of
doors, each with eighteen-century ceremonies of deference, and Edward
Henry stood at length in the hall of Wilkins’s. The sanctuary, then, was
successfully defiled, and up to the present nobody had demanded his
credentials! He took breath.

In its physical aspects Wilkins’s appeared to him to resemble other
hotels--such as the Majestic. And so far he was not mistaken.  Once
Wilkins’s had not resembled other hotels.  For many years it had
deliberately refused to recognise that even the Nineteenth Century had
dawned, and its magnificent antique discomfort had been one of its main
attractions to the elect.  For the elect desired nothing but their own
privileged society in order to be happy in a hotel.  A hip bath on a
blanket in the middle of the bedroom floor richly sufficed them,
provided they could be guaranteed against the calamity of meeting the
unelect in the corridors or at _table d’hôte_.  But the rising waters of
democracy--the intermixture of classes--had reacted adversely on
Wilkins’s.  The fall of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico had given
Wilkins’s sad food for thought long, long ago, and the obvious general
weakening of the monarchical principle had most considerably shaken it.
Came the day when Wilkins’s reluctantly decided that even it could not
fight against the tendency of the whole world, and then, at one superb
stroke, it had rebuilt and brought itself utterly up-to-date.

Thus it resembled other hotels.  (Save possibly in the reticence of its
advertisements!  The Majestic would advertise bathrooms as a miracle of
modernity, just as though common dwelling-houses had not possessed
bathrooms for the past thirty years.  Wilkins’s had superlative
bathrooms, but it said nothing about them.  Wilkins’s would as soon have
advertised two hundred bathrooms as two hundred bolsters; and for the
new Wilkins’s a bathroom was not more modern than a bolster.)  Also,
other hotels resembled Wilkins’s.  The Majestic, too, had a chamberlain
at its portico, and an assortment of pages to prove to its clients that
they were incapable of performing the simplest act for themselves.
Nevertheless, the difference between Wilkins’s and the Majestic was
enormous; and yet so subtle was it that Edward Henry could not
immediately detect where it resided.  Then he understood.  The
difference between Wilkins’s and the Majestic resided in the theory
which underlay its manner.  And the theory was that every person
entering its walls was of royal blood until he had admitted the
contrary.

Within the hotel it was already night.

Edward Henry self-consciously crossed the illuminated hall, which was
dotted with fashionable figures.  He knew not whither he was going,
until by chance he saw a golden grille with the word "Reception" shining
over it in letters of gold. Behind this grille, and still further
protected by an impregnable mahogany counter, stood three young dandies
in attitudes of graceful ease.  He approached them.  The fearful moment
was upon him. He had never in his life been so genuinely frightened.
Abject disgrace might be his portion within the next ten seconds.

Addressing himself to the dandy in the middle, he managed to articulate:

"What have you got in the way of rooms?"

Could the Five Towns have seen him then, as he waited, it would hardly
have recognised its "card," its character, its mirror of aplomb and
inventive audacity, in this figure of provincial and plebeian
diffidence.

The dandy bowed.

"Do you want a suite, sir?"

"Certainly!" said Edward Henry.  Rather too quickly, rather too
defiantly; in fact, rather rudely! A habitué would not have so savagely
hurled back in the dandy’s teeth the insinuation that he wanted only one
paltry room.

However, the dandy smiled, accepting with meekness Edward Henry’s sudden
arrogance, and consulted a sort of pentateuch that was open in front of
him.

No person in the hall saw Edward Henry’s hat fly up into the air and
fall back on his head.  But in the imagination of Edward Henry, that was
what his hat did.

He was saved.  He would have a proud tale for Brindley.  The thing was
as simple as the alphabet. You just walked in and they either fell on
your neck or kissed your feet.

Wilkins’s indeed!

A very handsome footman, not only in white gloves but in white calves,
was soon supplicating him to deign to enter a lift.  And when he emerged
from the lift another dandy--in a frock-coat of Paradise--was awaiting
him with obeisances. Apparently it had not yet occurred to anybody that
he was not the younger son of some aged king.

He was prayed to walk into a gorgeous suite consisting of a corridor, a
noble drawing-room (with portrait of His Majesty of Spain on the walls),
a large bedroom with two satinwood beds, a small bedroom, and a
bathroom, all gleaming with patent devices in porcelain and silver that
fully equalled those at home.

Asked if this suite would do, he said it would, trying as well as he
could to imply that he had seen better.  Then the dandy produced a
note-book and a pencil, and impassively waited.  The horrid fact that he
was un-elect could no longer be concealed. "E. H. Machin, Bursley," he
said shortly, and added: "Alderman Machin."  After all, why should he be
ashamed of being an alderman?

To his astonishment the dandy smiled very cordially, though always with
profound respect.

"Ah, yes!" said the dandy.  It was as though he had said: "We have long
wished for the high patronage of this great reputation."  Edward Henry
could make naught of it.

His opinion of Wilkins’s went down.

He followed the departing dandy up the corridor to the door of the suite
in an entirely vain attempt to enquire the price of the suite per day.
Not a syllable would pass his lips.  The dandy bowed and vanished.
Edward Henry stood lost at his own door, and his wandering eye caught
sight of a pile of trunks near to another door in the main corridor.
These trunks gave him a terrible shock.  He shut out the rest of the
hotel and retired into his private corridor to reflect.  He perceived
only too plainly that his luggage, now at the Majestic, never could come
into Wilkins’s.  It was not fashionable enough.  It lacked elegance.
The lounge suit that he was wearing might serve, but his luggage was
totally impossible.  Never before had he imagined that the aspect of
one’s luggage could have the least importance in one’s scheme of
existence.  He was learning, and he frankly admitted that he was in an
incomparable mess.



                                  III.


At the end of an extensive stroll through and round his new vast domain,
he had come to no decision upon a course of action.  Certain details of
the strange adventure pleased him--as for instance the dandy’s welcoming
recognition of his name; that, though puzzling, was a source of comfort
to him in his difficulties.  He also liked the suite; nay more, he was
much impressed by its gorgeousness, and such novel complications as the
forked electric switches, all of which he turned on, and the double
windows, one within the other, appealed to the domestic expert in him;
indeed, he at once had the idea of doubling the window of the best
bedroom at home; to do so would be a fierce blow to the Five Towns
Electric Traction Company, which, as everybody knew, delighted to keep
everybody awake at night and at dawn by means of its late and its early
tram-cars.  However, he could not wander up and down the glittering
solitude of his extensive suite for ever.  Something must be done.  Then
he had the notion of writing to Nellie; he had promised himself to write
to her daily; moreover, it would pass the time and perhaps help him to
some resolution.

He sat down to a delicate Louis XVI desk on which lay a Bible, a
Peerage, a telephone-book, a telephone, a lamp, and much distinguished
stationery. Between the tasselled folds of plushy curtains that pleated
themselves with the grandeur of painted curtains in a theatre, he
glanced out at the lights of Devonshire Square, from which not a sound
came. Then he lit the lamp and unscrewed his fountain pen.

"My dear wife--"

That was how he always began, whether in storm or sunshine.  Nellie
always began, "My darling husband"; but he was not a man to fling
darlings about.  Few husbands in the Five Towns are.  He thought
"darling," but he never wrote it, and he never said it, save quizzingly.

After these three words the composition of the letter came to a pause.
What was he going to tell Nellie?  He assuredly was not going to tell
her that he had engaged an unpriced suite at Wilkins’s.  He was not
going to mention Wilkins’s.  Then he intelligently perceived that the
note-paper and also the envelope mentioned Wilkins’s in no ambiguous
manner.  He tore up the sheet and searched for plain paper.  Now, on the
desk there was the ordinary hotel stationery, mourning stationery,
cards, letter-cards, and envelopes for every mood; but not a piece that
was not embossed with the historic name in royal blue.  The which
appeared to Edward Henry to point to a defect of foresight on the part
of Wilkins’s.  At the gigantic political club to which he belonged, and
which he had occasionally visited in order to demonstrate to himself and
others that he was a club-man, plain stationery was everywhere provided
for the use of husbands with a taste for reticence.  Why not at
Wilkins’s also?

On the other hand, why should he not write to his wife on Wilkins’s
paper?  Was he afraid of his wife?  He was not.  Would not the news
ultimately reach Bursley that he had stayed at Wilkins’s?  It would.
Nevertheless, he could not find the courage to write to Nellie on
Wilkins’s paper.

He looked around.  He was fearfully alone. He wanted the companionship,
were it only momentary, of something human.  He decided to have a look
at a flunkey, and he rang a bell.

Immediately, just as though wafted thither on a magic carpet, from the
court of Austria, a gentleman in waiting arrived in the doorway of the
drawing-room, planted himself gracefully on his black silk calves, and
bowed.

"I want some plain note-paper, please."

"Very good, sir."  Oh!  Perfection of tone and of mien!

Three minutes later the plain note-paper and envelopes were being
presented to Edward Henry on a salver.  As he took them, he looked
enquiringly at the gentleman in waiting, who supported his gaze with an
impenetrable, invulnerable servility. Edward Henry, beaten off with
great loss, thought: "There’s nothing doing here just now in the human
companionship line," and assumed the mask of a hereditary prince.

The black calves carried away their immaculate living burden, set above
all earthly ties.

He wrote nicely to Nellie about the weather and the journey, and
informed her also that London seemed as full as ever, and that he might
go to the theatre, but he wasn’t sure.  He dated the letter from the
Majestic.

As he was finishing it, he heard mysterious, disturbing footfalls in his
private corridor, and after trying for some time to ignore them, he was
forced by a vague alarm to investigate their origin.  A short
middle-aged, pallid man, with a long nose and long moustaches, wearing a
red and black-striped sleeved waistcoat and a white apron, was in the
corridor.  At the Turk’s Head such a person would have been the boots.
But Edward Henry remembered a notice under the bell, advising visitors
to ring once for the waiter, twice for the chambermaid, and three times
for the valet.  This, then, was the valet.  In certain picturesque
details of costume Wilkins’s was coquettishly French.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"I came to see if your luggage had arrived, sir. No doubt your servant
is bringing it.  Can I be of any assistance to you?"

The man thoughtfully twirled one end of his moustache.  It was an
appalling fault in demeanour; but the man was proud of his moustache.

"The first human being I’ve met here!" thought Edward Henry, attracted
too by a gleam in the eye of this eternal haunter of corridors.

"His servant!"  He saw that something must be done, and quickly.
Wilkins’s provided valets for emergencies, but obviously it expected
visitors to bring their own valets in addition.  Obviously existence
without a private valet was inconceivable to Wilkins’s.

"The fact is," said Edward Henry, "I’m in a very awkward situation."  He
hesitated, seeking to and fro in his mind for particulars of the
situation.

"Sorry to hear that, sir."

"Yes, a very awkward position."  He hesitated again.  "I’d booked
passages for myself and my valet on the _Minnetonka_, sailing from
Tilbury at noon to-day, and sent him on in front with my stuff, and at
the very last moment I’ve been absolutely prevented from sailing!  You
see how awkward it is!  I haven’t a thing here."

"It is indeed, sir!  And I suppose _he’s_ gone on, sir?"

"Of course he has!  He wouldn’t find out till after she sailed that I
wasn’t on board.  You know the crush and confusion there is on those big
liners just before they start."  Edward Henry had once assisted, under
very dramatic circumstances, at the departure of a transatlantic liner
from Liverpool.

"Just so, sir!"

"I’ve neither servant nor clothes!"  He considered that so far he was
doing admirably.  Indeed, the tale could not have been bettered, he
thought. His hope was that the fellow would not have the idea of
consulting the shipping intelligence in order to confirm the departure
of the _Minnetonka_ from Tilbury that day.  Possibly the _Minnetonka_
never had sailed and never would sail from Tilbury. Possibly she had
been sold years ago.  He had selected the first ship’s name that came
into his head. What did it matter?

"My man," he added to clinch--the proper word "man" had only just
occurred to him--"my man can’t be back again under three weeks at the
soonest."

The valet made one half-eager step towards him.

"If you’re wanting a temporary valet, sir, my son’s out of a place for
the moment--through no fault of his own.  He’s a very good valet, sir,
and soon learns a gentleman’s ways."

"Yes," said Edward Henry judiciously.  "But could he come at once?
That’s the point."  And he looked at his watch, as if to imply that
another hour without a valet would be more than human nature could
stand.

"I could have him round here in less than an hour, sir," said the hotel
valet, comprehending the gesture.  "He’s at Norwich Mews--Berkeley
Square way, sir."

Edward Henry hesitated.

"Very well, then!" he said commandingly. "Send for him.  Let me see
him."

He thought:

"Dash it!  I’m at Wilkins’s--I’ll be _at_ Wilkins’s!"

"Certainly, sir!  Thank you very much, sir."

The hotel valet was retiring when Edward Henry called him back.

"Stop a moment.  I’m just going out.  Help me on with my overcoat, will
you?"

The man jumped.

"And you might get me a tooth-brush," Edward Henry airily suggested.
"And I’ve a letter for the post."

As he walked down Devonshire Square in the dark, he hummed a tune:
certain sign that he was self-conscious, uneasy, and yet not unhappy.
At a small but expensive hosier’s in a side street he bought a shirt and
a suit of pajamas, and also permitted himself to be tempted by a special
job line of hair-brushes that the hosier had in his fancy department. On
hearing the powerful word "Wilkins’s," the hosier promised with
passionate obsequiousness that the goods should be delivered instantly.

Edward Henry cooled his excitement by an extended stroll, and finally
re-entered the outer hall of the hotel at half-past seven, and sat down
therein to see the world.  He knew by instinct that the boldest lounge
suit must not at that hour penetrate further into the public rooms of
Wilkins’s.

The world at its haughtiest was driving up to Wilkins’s to eat its
dinner in the unrivalled restaurant, and often guests staying at the
hotel came into the outer hall to greet invited friends.  And Edward
Henry was so overfaced by visions of woman’s brilliance and man’s utter
correctness that he scarcely knew where to look--so apologetic was he
for his grey lounge suit and the creases in his boots.  In less than a
quarter of an hour he appreciated with painful clearness that his entire
conception of existence had been wrong, and that he must begin again at
the beginning.  Nothing in his luggage at the Majestic would do.  His
socks would not do, nor his shoes, nor the braid on his trousers, nor
his cuff-links, nor his ready-made white bow, nor the number of studs in
the shirt-front, nor the collar of his coat.  Nothing!  Nothing!
To-morrow would be a full day.

He ventured apologetically into the lift.  In his private corridor a
young man respectfully waited, hat in hand, the paternal red-and-black
waistcoat by his side for purposes of introduction.  The young man was
wearing a rather shabby blue suit, but a rich and distinguished overcoat
that fitted him ill. In another five minutes Edward Henry had engaged a
skilled valet, aged twenty-four, name Joseph, with a testimonial of
efficiency from Sir Nicholas Winkworth, Bart., at a salary of a pound a
week and all found.

Joseph seemed to await instructions.  And Edward Henry was placed in a
new quandary.  He knew not whether the small bedroom in the suite was
for a child, or for his wife’s maid, or for his valet.  Quite probably
it would be a sacrilegious defiance of precedent to put a valet in the
small bedroom.  Quite probably Wilkins’s had a floor for private valets
in the roof.  Again, quite probably, the small bedroom might be after
all specially destined for valets!  He could not decide, and the most
precious thing in the universe to him in that crisis was his reputation
as a man about town in the eyes of Joseph.

But something had to be done.

"You’ll sleep in this room," said Edward Henry, indicating the door.  "I
may want you in the night."

"Yes, sir," said Joseph.

"I presume you’ll dine up here, sir," said Joseph, glancing at the
lounge suit.  His father had informed him of his new master’s
predicament.

"I shall," said Edward Henry.  "You might get the menu."



                                  IV.


He had a very bad night indeed, owing no doubt partly to a general
uneasiness in his unusual surroundings, and partly also to a special
uneasiness caused by the propinquity of a sleeping valet; but the main
origin of it was certainly his dreadful anxiety about the question of a
first-class tailor.  In the organisation of his new life a first-class
tailor was essential, and he was not acquainted with a first-class
London tailor.  He did not know a great deal concerning clothes, though
quite passably well dressed for a provincial, but he knew enough to be
sure that it was impossible to judge the merits of a tailor by his
sign-board, and therefore that if, wandering in the precincts of Bond
Street, he entered the first establishment that "looked likely," he
would have a good chance of being "done in the eye."  So he phrased it
to himself as he lay in bed.  He wanted a definite and utterly reliable
address.

He rang the bell.  Only, as it happened to be the wrong bell, he
obtained the presence of Joseph in a round-about way, through the agency
of a gentleman in waiting.  Such, however, is the human faculty of
adaptation to environment that he was merely amused in the morning by an
error which, on the previous night, would have put him into a sweat.

"Good morning, sir," said Joseph.

Edward Henry nodded, his hands under his head as he lay on his back.  He
decided to leave all initiative to Joseph.  The man drew up the blinds,
and, closing the double windows at the top, opened them very wide at the
bottom.

"It is a rainy morning, sir," said Joseph, letting in vast quantities of
air from Devonshire Square. Clearly, Sir Nicholas Winkworth had been a
breezy master.

"Oh!" murmured Edward Henry.

He felt a careless contempt for Joseph’s flunkeyism. Hitherto he had had
a theory that footmen, valets, and all male personal attendants were an
inexcusable excrescence on the social fabric.  The mere sight of them
often angered him, though for some reason he had no objection whatever
to servility in a nice-looking maid--indeed, rather enjoyed it.  But
now, in the person of Joseph, he saw that there were human or half-human
beings born to self-abasement, and that, if their destiny was to be
fulfilled, valetry was a necessary institution.  He had no pity for
Joseph, no shame in employing him. He scorned Joseph; and yet his
desire, as a man about town, to keep Joseph’s esteem was in no way
diminished.

"Shall I prepare your bath, sir?" asked Joseph, stationed in a supple
attitude by the side of the bed.

Edward Henry was visited by an idea.

"Have you had yours?" he demanded like a pistol-shot.

Edward Henry saw that Sir Nicholas had never asked that particular
question.

"No, sir."

"Not had your bath, man!  What on earth do you mean by it?  Go and have
your bath at once!"

A faint sycophantic smile lightened the amazed features of Joseph.  And
Edward Henry thought: "It’s astonishing, all the same, the way they can
read their masters.  This chap has seen already that I’m a card.  And
yet how?"

"Yes, sir," said Joseph.

"Have your bath in the bathroom here.  And be sure to leave everything
in order for me."

"Yes, sir."

As soon as Joseph had gone, Edward Henry jumped out of bed and listened.
He heard the discreet Joseph respectfully push the bolt of the bathroom
door.  Then he crept with noiseless rapidity to the small bedroom, and
was aware therein of a lack of order and of ventilation.  The rich and
distinguished overcoat was hanging on the brass knob at the foot of the
bed.  He seized it, and, scrutinizing the loop, read in yellow letters:
_Quayther and Cuthering, 47 Vigo Street, W_.  He knew that Quayther and
Cuthering must be the tailors of Sir Nicholas Winkworth, and hence
first-class.

Hoping for the best, and putting his trust in the general decency of
human nature, he did not trouble himself with the problem: was the
overcoat a gift or an appropriation?  But he preferred to assume the
generosity of Sir Nicholas rather than the dishonesty of Joseph.

Repassing the bathroom door, he knocked loudly on its glass.

"Don’t be all day!" he cried.  He was in a hurry now.

An hour later he said to Joseph:

"I’m going down to Quayther and Cuthering’s."

"Yes, sir," said Joseph, obviously much reassured.

"Nincompoop!" Edward Henry exclaimed secretly. "The fool thinks better
of me because my tailors are first-class."

But Edward Henry had failed to notice that he himself was thinking
better of himself because he had adopted first-class tailors.

Beneath the main door of his suite, as he went forth, he found a
business card of the West End Electric Brougham Supply Agency.  And
downstairs, solely to impress his individuality on the hall-porter, he
showed the card to that vizier with the casual question:

"These people any good?"

"An excellent firm, sir."

"What do they charge?"

"By the week, sir?"

He hesitated.  "Yes, by the week?"

"Twenty guineas, sir."

"Well, you might telephone for one.  Can you get it at once?"

"Certainly, sir."

The vizier turned towards the telephone in his lair.

"I say--" said Edward Henry.

"Sir?"

"I suppose one will be enough?"

"Well, sir, as a rule, yes," said the vizier calmly. "Sometimes I get a
couple for one family, sir."

Though he had started jocularly, Edward Henry finished by blenching.  "I
think one will do.... I may possibly send for my own car."

He drove to Quayther and Cuthering’s in his electric brougham, and there
dropped casually the name of Winkworth.  He explained humourously his
singular misadventure of the _Minnetonka_, and was very successful
therewith, so successful indeed, that he actually began to believe in
the reality of the adventure himself, and had an irrational impulse to
despatch a wireless message to his bewildered valet on board the
_Minnetonka_.

Subsequently he paid other fruitful visits in the neighbourhood, and at
about half-past eleven the fruit was arriving at Wilkins’s in the shape
of many parcels and boxes, comprising diverse items in the equipment of
a man about town, such as tie-clips and Innovation trunks.

Returning late to Wilkins’s for lunch, he marched jauntily into the
large brilliant restaurant, and commenced an adequate repast.  Of course
he was still wearing his mediocre lounge suit (his sole suit for another
two days), but somehow the consciousness that Quayther and Cutherings
were cutting out wondrous garments for him in Vigo Street stiffened his
shoulders and gave a mysterious style to that lounge suit.

At lunch he made one mistake, and enjoyed one very remarkable piece of
luck.

The mistake was to order an artichoke.  He did not know how to eat an
artichoke.  He had never tried to eat an artichoke, and his first essay
in this difficult and complex craft was a sad fiasco.  It would not have
mattered if, at the table next to his own, there had not been two
obviously experienced women, one ill dressed, with a red hat, the other
well dressed, with a blue hat; one middle-aged, the other much younger;
but both very observant.  And even so, it would scarcely have mattered,
had not the younger woman been so slim, pretty, and alluring.  While
tolerably careless of the opinion of the red-hatted plain woman of
middle age, he desired the unqualified approval of the delightful young
thing in the blue hat.  They certainly interested themselves in his
manoeuvres with the artichoke, and their amusement was imperfectly
concealed.  He forgave the blue hat, but considered that the red hat
ought to have known better.  They could not be princesses, nor even
titled aristocrats.  He supposed them to belong to some baccarat-playing
county family.

The piece of luck consisted in the passage down the restaurant of the
Countess of Chell, who had been lunching there with a party, and whom he
had known locally in more gusty days.  The countess bowed stiffly to the
red hat, and the red hat responded with eager fulsomeness.  It seemed to
be here as it no longer was in the Five Towns: everybody knew everybody!
The red hat and the blue might be titled, after all, he thought.  Then,
by sheer accident, the countess caught sight of him, and stopped dead,
bringing her escort to a standstill behind her.  Edward Henry blushed
and rose.

"Is it _you_, Mr. Machin?" murmured the still lovely creature warmly.

They shook hands.  Never had social pleasure so thrilled him.  The
conversation was short.  He did not presume on the past.  He knew that
here he was not on his own ash-pit, as they say in the Five Towns.  The
countess and her escort went forward.  Edward Henry sat down again.

He gave the red and the blue hats one calm glance, which they failed to
withstand.  The affair of the artichoke was forever wiped out.

After lunch he went forth again in his electric brougham.  The weather
had cleared.  The opulent streets were full of pride and sunshine.  And
as he penetrated into one shop after another, receiving kowtows,
obeisances, curtsies, homage, surrender, resignation, submission, he
gradually comprehended that it takes all sorts to make a world, and that
those who are called to greatness must accept with dignity the
ceremonials inseparable from greatness.  And the world had never seemed
to him so fine, nor any adventure so diverting and uplifting as this
adventure.

When he returned to his suite, his private corridor was piled up with a
numerous and excessively attractive assortment of parcels.  Joseph took
his overcoat and hat and a new umbrella, and placed an easy chair
conveniently for him in the drawing-room.

"Get my bill," he said shortly to Joseph as he sank into the gilded
fauteuil.

"Yes, sir."

One advantage of a valet, he discovered, is that you can order him to do
things which to do yourself would more than exhaust your moral courage.

The black-calved gentleman in waiting brought the bill.  It lay on a
salver, and was folded, conceivably so as to break the shock of it to
the recipient.

Edward Henry took it.

"Wait a minute," he said.

He read on the bill: "Apartment £8.  Dinner £1-2-0.  Breakfast 6s. 6d.
Lunch 18s.  Half Chablis 6s. 6d.  Valet’s board 10s.  Tooth-brush 2s.
6d.

"That’s a bit thick, half a crown for that toothbrush!" he said to
himself.  "However--"

The next instant he blenched once more.

"Gosh!" he privately exclaimed as he read: "Paid driver of taxicab
£2-3-6."

He had forgotten the taxi.  But he admired the _sang-froid_ of
Wilkins’s, which paid such trifles as a matter of course, without
deigning to disturb a guest by an enquiry.  Wilkins’s rose again in his
esteem.

The total of the bill exceeded thirteen pounds.

"All right," he said to the gentleman in waiting.

"Are you leaving to-day, sir?" the being permitted himself to ask.

"Of course I’m not leaving to-day!  Haven’t I hired an electric brougham
for a week?" Edward Henry burst out.  "But I suppose I’m entitled to
know how much I’m spending!"

The gentleman in waiting humbly bowed, and departed.

Alone in the splendid chamber, Edward Henry drew out a swollen
pocketbook and examined its crisp, crinkly contents, which made a
beauteous and a reassuring sight.

"Pooh!" he muttered.

He reckoned he would be living at the rate of about fifteen pounds a
day, or five thousand five hundred a year.  (He did not count the cost
of his purchases, because they were in the nature of a capital
expenditure.)

"Cheap!" he muttered.  "For once I’m about living up to my income!"

The sensation was exquisite in its novelty.

He ordered tea, and afterwards, feeling sleepy, he went fast asleep.

He awoke to the ringing of the telephone-bell.  It was quite dark.  The
telephone-bell continued to ring.

"Joseph!" he called.

The valet entered.

"What time is it?"

"After ten o’clock, sir."

"The deuce it is!"

He had slept over four hours!

"Well, answer that confounded telephone."

Joseph obeyed.

"It’s a Mr. Bryany, sir, if I catch the name right," said Joseph.

Bryany!  For twenty-four hours he had scarcely thought of Bryany, or the
option either.

"Bring the telephone here," said Edward Henry.

The cord would just reach to his chair.

"Hello!  Bryany!  Is that you?" cried Edward Henry gaily.

And then he heard the weakened voice of Mr. Bryany in his ear:

"How d’ye do, Mr. Machin.  I’ve been after you for the better part of
two days, and now I find you’re staying in the same hotel as Mr. Sachs
and me!"

"Oh!" said Edward Henry.

He understood now why on the previous day the dandy introducing him to
his suite had smiled a welcome at the name of Alderman Machin, and why
Joseph had accepted so naturally the command to take a bath.  Bryany had
been talking.  Bryany had been recounting his exploits as a card.

The voice of Bryany in his ear continued:

"Look here!  I’ve got Miss Euclid here and some friends of hers.  Of
course she wants to see you at once.  Can you come down?"

"Er--"  He hesitated.

He could not come down.  He would have no evening wear till the next day
but one.

Said the voice of Bryany:

"What?"

"I can’t," said Edward Henry.  "I’m not very well.  But listen.  All of
you come up to my rooms here and have supper, will you?  Suite 48."

"I’ll ask the lady," said the voice of Bryany, altered now, and a few
seconds later: "We’re coming."

"Joseph," Edward Henry gave orders rapidly as he took off his coat and
removed the pocketbook from it.  "I’m ill, you understand.  Anyhow, not
well.  Take this," handing him the coat, "and bring me the new
dressing-gown out of that green cardboard box from Rollet’s--I think it
is.  And then get the supper menu.  I’m very hungry.  I’ve had no
dinner."

Within sixty seconds he sat in state, wearing a grandiose yellow
dressing-gown.  The change was accomplished just in time.  Mr. Bryany
entered, and not only Mr. Bryany, but Mr. Seven Sachs, and not only
these, but the lady who had worn a red hat at lunch.

"Miss Rose Euclid," said Mr. Bryany, puffing and bending.




                               CHAPTER IV

                    ENTRY INTO THE THEATRICAL WORLD

                                   I.

Once, on a short visit to London, Edward Henry had paid half a crown to
be let into a certain enclosure with a very low ceiling. This enclosure
was already crowded with some three hundred people, sitting and
standing.  Edward Henry had stood in the only unoccupied spot he could
find, behind a pillar.  When he had made himself as comfortable as
possible by turning up his collar against the sharp winds that
continually entered from the street, he had peered forward, and seen in
front of this enclosure another and larger enclosure also crowded with
people, but more expensive people.  After a blank interval of thirty
minutes a band had begun to play at an incredible distance in front of
him, extinguishing the noises of traffic in the street.  After another
interval an oblong space, rather further off even than the band,
suddenly grew bright, and Edward Henry, by curving his neck, first to
one side of the pillar and then to the other, had had tantalising
glimpses of the interior of a doll’s drawing-room and of male and female
dolls therein.

He could only see, even partially, the interior half of the
drawing-room,--a little higher than the heads of the dolls,--because the
rest was cut off from his vision by the lowness of his own ceiling.

The dolls were talking, but he could not catch clearly what they said,
save at the rare moments when an omnibus or a van did not happen to be
thundering down the street behind him.  Then one special doll had come
exquisitely into the drawing-room, and at the sight of her the five
hundred people in front of him, and numbers of other people perched
hidden beyond his ceiling, had clapped fervently and even cried aloud in
their excitement. And he, too, had clapped fervently, and had muttered
"Bravo!"  This special doll was a marvel of touching and persuasive
grace, with a voice--when Edward Henry could hear it--that melted the
spine.  This special doll had every elegance, and seemed to be in the
highest pride of youth.  At the close of the affair, as this special
doll sank into the embrace of a male doll from whom she had been
unjustly separated, and then straightened herself, deliciously and
confidently smiling, to take the tremendous applause of Edward Henry and
the rest, Edward Henry thought that he had never assisted at a triumph
so genuine and so inspiring.  Oblivious of the pain in his neck, and of
the choking foul atmosphere of the enclosure, accurately described as
the pit, he had gone forth into the street with a subconscious notion in
his head that the special doll was more than human, was half divine.
And he had said afterwards, with immense satisfaction, at Bursley: "Yes,
I saw Rose Euclid in ’Flower of the Heart.’"

He had never set eyes on her since.

And now, on this day at Wilkins’s, he had seen in the restaurant, and he
saw again before him in his private parlour, a faded and stoutish woman,
negligently if expensively dressed, with a fatigued, nervous, watery
glance, an unnatural, pale-violet complexion, a wrinkled skin, and dyed
hair; a woman of whom it might be said that she had escaped
grandmotherhood, if indeed she had escaped it, by mere luck--and he was
pointblank commanded to believe that she and Rose Euclid were the same
person.

It was one of the most shattering shocks of all his career, which,
nevertheless, had not been untumultuous.  And within his
dressing-gown--which nobody remarked upon--he was busy picking up and
piecing together, as quickly as he could, the shivered fragments of his
ideas.

He literally did not recognise Rose Euclid. True, fifteen years had
passed since the night in the pit!  And he himself was fifteen years
older.  But in his mind he had never pictured any change in Rose Euclid.
True, he had been familiar with the enormous renown of Rose Euclid as
far back as he could remember taking any interest in theatrical
advertisements!  But he had not permitted her to reach an age of more
than about thirty-one or two.  Whereas he now perceived that even the
exquisite doll in paradise that he had gloated over from his pit must
have been quite thirty-five--then....

Well, he scornfully pitied Rose Euclid.  He blamed her for not having
accomplished the miracle of eternal youth.  He actually considered that
she had cheated him.  "Is this all?  What a swindle!" he thought, as he
was piecing together the shivered fragments of his ideas into a new
pattern.  He had felt much the same as a boy, at Bursley Annual Wakes
once, on entering a booth which promised horrors and did not supply
them.  He had been "done" all these years....

Reluctantly he admitted that Rose Euclid could not help her age.  But,
at any rate, she ought to have grown older beautifully, with charming
dignity and vivacity--in fact, she ought to have contrived to be old and
young simultaneously.  Or, in the alternative, she ought to have
modestly retired into the country and lived on her memories and such
money as she had not squandered.  She had no right to be abroad.  At
worst, she ought to have _looked_ famous.  And, because her name and
fame and photographs, as an emotional actress had been continually in
the newspapers, therefore she ought to have been refined, delicate,
distinguished, and full of witty and gracious small talk.  That she had
played the heroine of "Flower of the Heart" four hundred times, and the
heroine of "The Grenadier" four hundred and fifty times, and the heroine
of "The Wife’s Ordeal" nearly five hundred times, made it incumbent upon
her, in Edward Henry’s subconscious opinion, to possess all the talents
of a woman of the world and all the virgin freshness of a girl.  Which
shows how cruelly stupid Edward Henry was in comparison with the
enlightened rest of us.

Why (he protested secretly), she was even tongue-tied!

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Machin," she said awkwardly, in a weak voice,
with a peculiar gesture as she shook hands.  Then, a mechanical nervous
giggle--and then silence.

"Happy to make your acquaintance, sir," said Mr. Seven Sachs, and the
arch-famous American actor-author also lapsed into silence.  But the
silence of Mr. Seven Sachs was different from Rose Euclid’s.  He was not
shy.  A dark and handsome, tranquil, youngish man, with a redoubtable
square chin, delicately rounded at the corners, he strikingly resembled
his own figure on the stage; and, moreover, he seemed to regard silence
as a natural and proper condition.  He simply stood, in a graceful
posture, with his muscles at ease, and waited.

Mr. Bryany, behind, seemed to be reduced in stature, and to have become
apologetic for himself in the presence of greatness.

Still, Mr. Bryany did say something.

Said Mr. Bryany:

"Sorry to hear you’ve been seedy, Mr. Machin!"

"Oh, yes!" Rose Euclid blurted out, as if shot. "It’s very good of you
to ask us up here."

Mr. Seven Sachs concurred, adding that he hoped the illness was not
serious.

Edward Henry said it was not.

"Won’t you sit down, all of you?" said Edward Henry.
"Miss--er--Euclid--"

They all sat down except Mr. Bryany.

"Sit down, Bryany," said Edward Henry.  "I’m glad to be able to return
your hospitality at the Turk’s Head."

This was a blow for Mr. Bryany, who obviously felt it, and grew even
more apologetic as he fumbled with assumed sprightliness at a chair.

"Fancy your being here all the time!" said he, "and me looked for you
everywhere--"

"Mr. Bryany," Seven Sachs interrupted him calmly, "have you got those
letters off?"

"Not yet, sir."

Seven Sachs urbanely smiled.  "I think we ought to get them off
to-night."

"Certainly," agreed Mr. Bryany with eagerness, and moved towards the
door.

"Here’s the key of my sitting-room," Seven Sachs stopped him, producing
a key.

Mr. Bryany, by a mischance catching Edward Henry’s eye as he took the
key, blushed.

In a moment Edward Henry was alone with the two silent celebrities.

"Well," said Edward Henry to himself, "I’ve let myself in for it this
time--no mistake!  What in the name of common sense am I doing here?"

Rose Euclid coughed, and arranged the folds of her dress.

"I suppose, like most Americans, you see all the sights," said Edward
Henry to Seven Sachs, "the Five Towns is much visited by Americans.
What do you think of my dressing-gown?"

"Bully!" said Seven Sachs, with the faintest twinkle.  And Rose Euclid
gave the mechanical nervous giggle.

"I can do with this chap," thought Edward Henry.

The gentleman in waiting entered with the supper menu.

"Thank Heaven!" thought Edward Henry.

Rose Euclid, requested to order a supper after her own mind, stared
vaguely at the menu for some moments, and then said that she did not
know what to order.

"Artichokes?" Edward Henry blandly suggested.

Again the giggle, followed this time by a flush! And suddenly Edward
Henry recognised in her the entrancing creature of fifteen years ago!
Her head thrown back, she had put her left hand behind her, and was
groping with her long fingers for an object to touch.  Having found at
length the arm of another chair, she drew her fingers feverishly along
its surface.  He vividly remembered the gesture in "Flower of the
Heart."  She had used it with terrific effect at every grand emotional
crisis of the play. He now recognised even her face!

"Did Mr. Bryany tell you that my two boys are coming up?" said she.  "I
left them behind to do some telephoning for me."

"Delighted!" said Edward Henry.  "The more the merrier!"

And he hoped that he spoke true.

But her two boys!

"Mr. Marrier--he’s a young manager.  I don’t knew whether you know him;
very, very talented. And Carlo Trent."

"Same name as my dog," Edward Henry indiscreetly murmured; and his fancy
flew back to the home he had quitted, and Wilkins’s and everybody in it
grew transiently unreal to him.

"Delighted!" he said again.

He was relieved that her two boys were not her offspring.  That at least
was something gained.

"_You_ know--the dramatist," said Rose Euclid, apparently disappointed
by the effect on Edward Henry of the name of Carlo Trent.

"Really!" said Edward Henry.  "I hope he won’t mind me being in a
dressing-gown."

The gentleman in waiting, obsequiously restive, managed to choose the
supper himself.  Leaving, he reached the door just in time to hold it
open for the entrance of Mr. Marrier and Mr. Carlo Trent, who were
talking, with noticeable freedom and emphasis, in an accent which in the
Five Towns is known as the "haw-haw," the "lah-di-dah," or the
"Kensingtonian" accent.



                                  II.


Within ten minutes, within less than ten minutes, Alderman Edward Henry
Machin’s supper-party at Wilkins’s was so wonderfully changed for the
better that Edward Henry might have been excused for not recognising it
as his own.

The service at Wilkins’s, where they profoundly understood human nature,
was very intelligent. Somewhere in a central bureau at Wilkins’s sat a
psychologist who knew, for example, that a supper commanded on the spur
of the moment must be produced instantly if it is to be enjoyed.  Delay
in these capricious cases impairs the ecstasy, and therefore lessens the
chance of other similar meals being commanded at the same establishment.
Hence, no sooner had the gentleman in waiting disappeared with the
order, than certain esquires appeared with the limbs and body of a table
which they set up in Edward Henry’s drawing-room; and they covered the
board with a damask cloth and half covered the damask cloth with
flowers, glasses, and plates, and laid a special private wire from the
skirting-board near the hearth to a spot on the table beneath Edward
Henry’s left hand, so that he could summon courtiers on the slightest
provocation with the minimum of exertion.  Then immediately brown bread
and butter and lemons and red-pepper came, followed by oysters, followed
by bottles of pale wine, both still and sparkling.  Thus, before the
principal dishes had even begun to frizzle in the distant kitchens, the
revellers were under the illusion that the entire supper was waiting
just outside the door.

Yes, they were revellers now!  For the advent of her young men had
transformed Rose Euclid, and Rose Euclid had transformed the general
situation. At the table, Edward Henry occupied one side of it, Mr. Seven
Sachs occupied the side opposite, Mr. Marrier, the very, very talented
young manager, occupied the side to Edward Henry’s left, and Rose Euclid
and Carlo Trent together occupied the side to his right.

Trent and Marrier were each about thirty years of age.  Trent, with a
deep voice, had extremely lustrous eyes, which eyes continually dwelt on
Rose Euclid in admiration.  Apparently, all she needed in this valley
was oysters and admiration, and she now had both in unlimited
quantities.

"Oysters are darlings," she said, as she swallowed the first.

Carlo Trent kissed her hand respectfully--for she was old enough to be
his mother.

"And you are the greatest tragic actress in the world, Ra-ose!" said he
in the Kensingtonian bass.

A few moments earlier Rose Euclid had whispered to Edward Henry that
Carlo Trent was the greatest dramatic poet in the world.  She flowered
now beneath the sun of those dark lustrous eyes and the soft rain of
that admiration from the greatest dramatic poet in the world.  It really
did seem to Edward Henry that she grew younger.  Assuredly she grew more
girlish, and her voice improved. And then the bottles began to pop, and
it was as though the action of uncorking wine automatically uncorked
hearts also.  Mr. Seven Sachs, sitting square and upright, smiled gaily
at Edward Henry across the gleaming table, and raised a glass.  Little
Marrier, who at nearly all times had a most enthusiastic smile, did the
same.  In the result, five glasses met over the central bed of
chrysanthemums. Edward Henry was happy.  Surrounded by enigmas,--for he
had no conception whatever why Rose Euclid had brought any of the three
men to his table,--he was nevertheless uplifted.

As he looked about him, at the rich table, and at the glittering
chandelier overhead (albeit the lamps thereof were inferior to his own),
and at the expanses of soft carpet, and at the silken-textured walls,
and at the voluptuous curtains, and at the couple of impeccable
gentlemen in waiting, and at Joseph who knew his place behind his
master’s chair,--he came to the justifiable conclusion that money was a
marvellous thing, and the workings of commerce mysterious and beautiful.
He had invented the Five Towns Thrift Club; working men and their wives
in the Five Towns were paying their two-pences, and sixpences, and
shillings weekly into his Club, and finding the transaction a real
convenience--and lo! he was entertaining celebrities at Wilkins’s.

For, mind you, they were celebrities.  He knew Seven Sachs was a
celebrity because he had verily seen him act--and act very well--in his
own play, and because his name in letters a foot high had dominated all
the hoardings of the Five Towns.  As for Rose Euclid, could there be a
greater celebrity? Such was the strange power of the popular legend
concerning her, that even now, despite the first fearful shock of
disappointment, Edward Henry could not call her by her name, without
self-consciously stumbling over it, without a curious thrill.  And
further, he was revising his judgment of her, as well as lowering her
age slightly.  On coming into the room she had doubtless been almost as
startled as himself, and her constrained muteness had been probably due
to a guilty feeling in the matter of passing too open remarks to a
friend about a perfect stranger’s manner of eating artichokes.  The
which, supposition flattered him.  (By the way, he wished she had
brought the young friend who had shared her amusement over his
artichoke.)  With regard to the other two men, he was quite ready to
believe that Carlo Trent was the world’s greatest poet, and to admit the
exceeding talent of Mr. Marrier as a theatrical manager....  In fact,
unmistakable celebrities, one and all!  He himself was a celebrity. A
certain quality in the attitude of each of his guests showed clearly
that they considered him a celebrity, and not only a celebrity, but a
card,--Bryany must have been talking,--and the conviction of this
rendered him happy.  His magnificent hunger rendered him still happier.
And the reflection that Brindley owed him half a crown put a top on his
bliss!

"I like your dressing-gown, Mr. Machin," said Carlo Trent suddenly,
after his first spoonful of soup.

"Then I needn’t apologise for it!" Edward Henry replied.

"It is the dressing-gown of my dreams," Carlo Trent went on.

"Well," said Edward Henry, "as we’re on the subject, I like your
shirt-front."

Carlo Trent was wearing a soft shirt.  The other three shirts were all
rigidly starched.  Hitherto Edward Henry had imagined that a fashionable
evening shirt should be, before aught else, bullet-proof. He now
appreciated the distinction of a frilled and gently flowing breastplate,
especially when a broad purple eye-glass ribbon wandered across it.
Rose Euclid gazed in modest transport at Carlo’s chest.

"The colour," Carlo proceeded, ignoring Edward Henry’s compliment, "the
colour is inspiring. So is the texture.  I have a woman’s delight in
textures.  I could certainly produce better hexameters in such a
dressing-gown."

Although Edward Henry, owing to an unfortunate hiatus in his education,
did not know what a hexameter might be, he was artist enough to
comprehend the effect of attire on creative work, for he had noticed
that he himself could make more money in one necktie than in another,
and he would instinctively take particular care in the morning choice of
a cravat on days when he meditated a great coup.

"Why don’t you get one?" Marrier suggested.

"Do you really think I could?" asked Carlo Trent, as if the possibility
were shimmering far out of his reach like a rainbow.

"Rather!" smiled Marrier.  "I don’t mind laying a fiver that Mr.
Machin’s dressing-gown came from Drook’s in Old Bond Street."  But
instead of saying "old" he said "ehoold."

"It did," Edward Henry admitted.

Mr. Marrier beamed with satisfaction.

"Drook’s, you say?" murmured Carlo Trent. "Old Bond Street?" and wrote
down the information on his shirt-cuff.

Rose Euclid watched him write.

"Yes, Carlo," said she.  "But don’t you think we’d better begin to talk
about the theatre?  You haven’t told me yet if you got hold of Longay on
the ’phone."

"Of course we got hold of him," said Marrier. "He agrees with me that
’The Intellectual’ is a better name for it."

Rose Euclid clapped her hands.

"I’m so glad!" she cried.  "Now what do you think of it as a name, Mr.
Machin,--’The Intellectual Theatre?’  You see it’s most important we
should settle on the name, isn’t it?"

It is no exaggeration to say that Edward Henry felt a wave of cold in
the small of his back, and also a sinking away of the nevertheless quite
solid chair on which he sat.  He had more than the typical Englishman’s
sane distrust of that morbid word "Intellectual."  His attitude towards
it amounted to active dislike.  If ever he used it, he would on no
account use it alone; he would say, "Intellectual, and all that sort of
thing!" with an air of pushing violently away from him everything that
the phrase implied.  The notion of baptising a theatre with the fearsome
word horrified him.  Still he had to maintain his nerve and his repute.
So he drank some champagne, and smiled nonchalantly as the imperturbable
duellist smiles while the pistols are being examined.

"Well--" he murmured.

"You see," Marrier broke in, with the smile ecstatic, almost dancing on
his chair.  "There’s no use in compromise.  Compromise is and always has
been the curse of this country.  The unintellectual drahma is
dead--dead.  Naoobody can deny that. All the box-offices in the West are
proclaiming it."

"Should you call your play intellectual, Mr. Sachs?" Edward Henry
inquired across the table.

"I scarcely know," said Mr. Seven Sachs calmly. "I know I’ve played it
myself fifteen hundred and two times, and that’s saying nothing of my
three subsidiary companies on the road."

"What is Mr. Sach’s play?" asked Carlo Trent fretfully.

"Don’t you know, Carlo?" Rose Euclid patted him.  "’Overheard.’"

"Oh!  I’ve never seen it."

"But it was on all the hoardings!"

"I never read the hoardings," said Carlo.  "Is it in verse?"

"No, it isn’t," Mr. Seven Sachs briefly responded. "But I’ve made over
six hundred thousand dollars out of it."

"Then of course it’s intellectual!" asserted Mr. Marrier positively.
"That proves it.  I’m very sorry I’ve not seen it either; but it must be
intellectual.  The day of the unintellectual drama is over. The people
won’t have it.  We must have faith in the people, and we can’t show our
faith better than by calling our theatre by its proper name--’The
Intellectual Theatre!’"

("_His_ theatre!" thought Edward Henry. "What’s he got to do with it?")

"I don’t know that I’m so much in love with your ’Intellectual,’"
muttered Carlo Trent.

"_Aren’t_ you?" protested Rose Euclid, shocked.

"Of course I’m not," said Carlo.  "I told you before, and I tell you
now, that there’s only one name for the theatre--’The Muses’ Theatre!’"

"Perhaps you’re right!" Rose agreed, as if a swift revelation had come
to her.  "Yes, you’re right."

("She’ll make a cheerful sort of partner for a fellow," thought Edward
Henry, "if she’s in the habit of changing her mind like that every
thirty seconds."  His appetite had gone.  He could only drink.)

"Naturally, I’m right!  Aren’t we going to open with my play, and isn’t
my play in verse? ... I’m sure you’ll agree with me, Mr. Machin, that
there is no real drama except the poetical drama."

Edward Henry was entirely at a loss.  Indeed, he was drowning in his
dressing-gown, so favourable to the composition of hexameters.

"Poetry..." he vaguely breathed.

"Yes, sir," said Carlo Trent.  "Poetry."

"I’ve never read any poetry in my life," said Edward Henry, like a
desperate criminal.  "Not a line."

Whereupon Carlo Trent rose up from his seat, and his eye-glasses dangled
in front of him.

"Mr. Machin," said he with the utmost benevolence. "This is the most
interesting thing I’ve ever come across.  Do you know, you’re precisely
the man I’ve always been wanting to meet? ... The virgin mind.  The
clean slate....  Do you know, you’re precisely the man that it’s my
ambition to write for?"

"It’s very kind of you," said Edward Henry feebly, beaten, and
consciously beaten.

(He thought miserably: "What would Nellie think if she saw me in this
gang?")

Carlo Trent went on, turning to Rose Euclid:

"Rose, will you recite those lines of Nashe?"

Rose Euclid began to blush.

"That bit you taught me the day before yesterday?"

"Only the three lines!  No more!  They are the very essence of
poetry--poetry at its purest. We’ll see the effect of them on Mr.
Machin.  We’ll just see.  It’s the ideal opportunity to test my theory.
Now, there’s a good girl!"

"Oh!  I can’t.  I’m too nervous," stammered Rose.

"You can, and you must," said Carlo, gazing at her in homage.  "Nobody
in the world can say them as well as you can.  Now!"

Rose Euclid stood up.

"One moment," Carlo stopped her.  "There’s too much light.  We can’t do
with all this light. Mr. Machin--do you mind?"

A wave of the hand, and all the lights were extinguished, save a lamp on
the mantelpiece, and in the disconcertingly darkened room Rose Euclid
turned her face towards the ray from this solitary silk-shaded globe.

Her hand groped out behind her, found the table-cloth and began to
scratch it agitatedly.  She lifted her head.  She was the actress,
impressive and subjugating, and Edward Henry felt her power.  Then she
intoned:

    "_Brightness falls from the air;_
    _Queens have died young and fair;_
    _Dust hath closed Helen’s eye._"


And she ceased and sat down.  There was a silence.

"_Bravo!_" murmured Carlo Trent.

"_Bravo!_" murmured Mr. Marrier.

Edward Henry in the gloom caught Mr. Seven Sachs’s unalterable observant
smile across the table.

"Well, Mr. Machin?" said Carlo Trent.

Edward Henry had felt a tremor at the vibrations of Rose Euclid’s voice.
But the words she uttered had set up no clear image in his mind, unless
it might be of some solid body falling from the air, or of a young woman
named Helen walking along Trafalgar Road, Bursley, on a dusty day, and
getting the dust in her eyes.  He knew not what to answer.

"Is that all there is of it?" he asked at length.

Carlo Trent said:

"It’s from Thomas Nashe’s ’Song in Time of Pestilence.’  The closing
lines of the verse are:

    "_I am sick, I must die--_
    _Lord, have mercy on me!_"


"Well," said Edward Henry, recovering, "I rather like the end.  I think
the end’s very appropriate."

Mr. Seven Sachs choked over his wine, and kept on choking.



                                  III.


Mr. Marrier was the first to recover from this blow to the prestige of
poetry.  Or perhaps it would be more honest to say that Mr. Marrier had
suffered no inconvenience from the contretemps.  His apparent gleeful
zest in life had not been impaired.  He was a born optimist, of an
extreme type unknown beyond the circumferences of theatrical circles.

"I _say_," he emphasised, "I’ve got an ideah.  We ought to be
photographed like that.  Do you no end of good."  He glanced
encouragingly at Rose Euclid.  "Don’t you see it in the illustrated
papers? ’A prayvate supper-party at Wilkins’s Hotel.  Miss Ra-ose Euclid
reciting verse at a discussion of the plans for her new theatre in
Piccadilly Circus. The figures reading from left to right are: Mr. Seven
Sachs, the famous actor-author; Miss Rose Euclid; Mr. Carlo Trent, the
celebrated dramatic poet; Mr. Alderman Machin, the well-known Midlands
capitalist,’ and so on!"  Mr. Marrier repeated, "and so on."

"It’s a notion," said Rose Euclid dreamily.

"But how _can_ we be photographed?" Carlo Trent demanded with
irritation.

"Perfectly easy."

"Now?"

"In ten minutes.  I know a photographer in Brook Street."

"Would he come at once?" Carlo Trent frowned at his watch.

"Rather!" Mr. Marrier gaily soothed him, as he went over to the
telephone.  And Mr. Marrier’s bright boyish face radiated forth the
assurance that nothing in all his existence had more completely filled
him with sincere joy than this enterprise of procuring a photograph of
the party.  Even in giving the photographer’s number,--he was one of
those prodigies who remember infallibly all telephone numbers,--his
voice seemed to gloat upon his project.

(And while Mr. Marrier, having obtained communication with the
photographer, was saying gloriously into the telephone: "Yes, Wilkins’s.
No. Quite private.  I’ve got Miss Rose Euclid here, and Mr. Seven
Sachs--" while Mr. Marrier was thus proceeding with his list of star
attractions, Edward Henry was thinking: "’_Her_ new theatre,’--now! It
was ’his’ a few minutes back!...

"The well-known Midland capitalist, eh?  Oh!  Ah!")

He drank again.  He said to himself: "I’ve had all I can digest of this
beastly balloony stuff."  (He meant the champagne.)  "If I finish this
glass, I’m bound to have a bad night."  And he finished the glass, and
planked it down firmly on the table.

"Well," he remarked aloud cheerfully, "if we’re to be photographed, I
suppose we shall want a bit more light on the subject."

Joseph sprang to the switches.

"Please!" Carlo Trent raised a protesting hand.

The switches were not turned.  In the beautiful dimness the greatest
tragic actress in the world and the greatest dramatic poet in the world
gazed at each other, seeking and finding solace in mutual esteem.

"I suppose it wouldn’t do to call it the Euclid Theater?" Rose
questioned casually, without moving her eyes.

"Splendid!" cried Mr. Marrier from the telephone.

"It all depends whether there are enough mathematical students in London
to fill the theater for a run," said Edward Henry.

"Oh!  D’you think so?" murmured Rose, surprised and vaguely puzzled.

At that instant Edward Henry might have rushed from the room and taken
the night mail back to the Five Towns, and never any more have ventured
into the perils of London, if Carlo Trent had not turned his head and
signified by a curt reluctant laugh that he saw the joke.  For Edward
Henry could no longer depend on Mr. Seven Sachs.  Mr. Seven Sachs had to
take the greatest pains to keep the muscles of his face in strict order.
The slightest laxity with them--and he would have been involved in
another and more serious suffocation.

"No," said Carlo Trent, "’The Muses’ Theatre’ is the only possible
title.  There is money in the poetical drama."  He looked hard at Edward
Henry, as though to stare down the memory of the failure of Nashe’s
verse.  "I don’t want money.  I hate the thought of money.  But money is
the only proof of democratic appreciation, and that is what I need, and
what every artist needs....  Don’t you think there’s money in the
poetical drama, Mr. Sachs?"

"Not in America," said Mr. Sachs.  "London is a queer place."

"Look at the runs of Stephen Phillips’s plays!"

"Yes....  I only reckon to know America."

"Look at what Pilgrim’s made out of Shakespeare."

"I thought you were talking about poetry," said Edward Henry too
hastily.

"And isn’t Shakespeare poetry?" Carlo Trent challenged.

"Well, I suppose if you put it in that way, he _is_!" Edward Henry
cautiously admitted, humbled.  He was under the disadvantage of never
having seen or read "Shakespeare."  His sure instinct had always warned
him against being drawn into "Shakespeare."

"And has Miss Euclid ever done anything finer than Constance?"

"I don’t know," Edward Henry pleaded. "Why--Miss Euclid in ’King
John’--"

"I never saw ’King John,’" said Edward Henry.

"_Do you mean to say,_" expostulated Carlo Trent in italics, "_that you
never saw Rose Euclid as Constance?_"

And Edward Henry, shaking his abashed head, perceived that his life had
been wasted.

Carlo, for a few moments, grew reflective and softer.

"It’s one of my earliest and most precious boyish memories," he
murmured, as he examined the ceiling.  "It must have been in eighteen--"

Rose Euclid abandoned the ice with which she had just been served, and
by a single gesture drew Carlo’s attention away from the ceiling and
towards the fact that it would be clumsy on his part to indulge further
in the chronology of her career.  She began to blush again.

Mr. Marrier, now back at the table after a successful expedition, beamed
over his ice:

"It was your ’Constance’ that led to your friendship with the Countess
of Chell, wasn’t it, Ra-ose? You know," he turned to Edward Henry, "Miss
Euclid and the countess are virry intimate."

"Yes, I know," said Edward Henry.

Rose Euclid continued to blush.  Her agitated hand scratched the back of
the chair behind her.

"Even Sir John Pilgrim admits I can act Shakespeare," she said in a
thick, mournful voice, looking at the cloth as she pronounced the august
name of the head of the dramatic profession.  "It may surprise you to
know, Mr. Machin, that about a month ago, after he’d quarrelled with
Selina Gregory, Sir John asked me if I’d care to star with him on his
Shakespearean tour round the world next spring, and I said I would if
he’d include Carlo’s poetical play, ’The Orient Pearl,’ and he wouldn’t!
No, he wouldn’t!  And now he’s got little Cora Pryde! She isn’t
twenty-two, and she’s going to play Juliet! Can you imagine such a
thing?  As if a mere girl could play Juliet!"

Carlo observed the mature actress with deep satisfaction, proud of her,
and proud also of himself.

"I wouldn’t go with Pilgrim now," exclaimed Rose passionately, "not if
he went down on his knees tome!"

"And nothing on earth would induce me to let him have ’The Orient
Pearl’!" Carlo Trent asseverated with equal passion.  "He’s lost that
forever," he added grimly.  "It won’t be he who’ll collar the profits
out of that!  It’ll just be ourselves!"

"Not if he went down on his knees to me!" Rose was repeating to herself
with fervency.

The calm of despair took possession of Edward Henry.  He felt that he
must act immediately--he knew his own mood, by long experience.
Exploring the pockets of the dressing-gown which had aroused the longing
of the greatest dramatic poet in the world, he discovered in one of them
precisely the piece of apparatus he required; namely, a slip of paper
suitable for writing.  It was a carbon duplicate of the bill for the
dressing-gown, and showed the word "Drook" in massive printed black, and
the figures £4-4-0 in faint blue.  He drew a pencil from his waistcoat
and inscribed on the paper:

"Go out, and then come back in a couple of minutes and tell me someone
wants to speak to me urgently in the next room."

With a minimum of ostentation he gave the document to Joseph, who,
evidently well trained under Sir Nicholas, vanished into the next room
before attempting to read it.

"I hope," said Edward Henry to Carlo Trent, "that this money-making play
is reserved for the new theatre."

"Utterly," said Carlo Trent.

"With Miss Euclid in the principal part?"

"Rather!" sang Mr. Marrier.  "Rather!"

"I shall never, never appear at any other theatre, Mr. Machin!" said
Rose with tragic emotion, once more feeling with her fingers along the
back of her chair.  "So I hope the building will begin at once. In less
than six months we ought to open."

"Easily!" sang the optimist.

Joseph returned to the room, and sought his master’s attention in a
whisper.

"What is it?" Edward Henry asked irritably. "Speak up!"

"A gentleman wishes to know if he can speak to you in the next room,
sir."

"Well, he can’t."

"He said it was urgent, sir."

Scowling, Edward Henry rose.  "Excuse me," he said.  "I won’t be a
moment.  Help yourselves to the liqueurs.  You chaps can go, I fancy."
The last remark was addressed to the gentlemen in waiting.

The next room was the vast bedroom with two beds in it.  Edward Henry
closed the door carefully, and drew the portiére across it.  Then he
listened.  No sound penetrated from the scene of the supper.

"There _is_ a telephone in this room, isn’t there?" he said to Joseph.
"Oh, yes; there it is!  Well, you can go."

"Yes, sir."

Edward Henry sat down on one of the beds by the hook on which hung the
telephone.  And he cogitated upon the characteristics of certain members
of the party which he had just left.  "I’m a ’virgin mind,’ am I?" he
thought.  "I’m a ’clean slate’?  Well! ... Their notion of business is
to begin by discussing the name of the theatre!  And they haven’t even
taken up the option!  Ye gods! ’Intellectual!’  ’Muses!’  ’The Orient
Pearl.’  And she’s fifty--that I swear!  Not a word yet of real
business--not one word!  He may be a poet. I dare say he is.  He’s a
conceited ass.  Why, even Bryany was better than that lot.  Only Sachs
turned Bryany out.  I like Sachs.  But he won’t open his mouth....
’Capitalist!’  Well, they spoilt my appetite, and I hate champagne! ...
The poet hates money....  No, he ’hates the thought of money.’  And
she’s changing her mind the whole blessed time!  A month ago she’d have
gone over to Pilgrim, and the poet too, like a house a fire! ...
Photographed indeed!  The bally photographer will be here in a minute!
... They take me for a fool! ... Or don’t they know any better? ...
Anyhow, I am a fool....  I must teach ’em summat!"

He seized the telephone.

"Hello!" he said into it.  "I want you to put me on to the drawing-room
of Suite No. 48, please. Who?  Oh, me!  I’m in the bedroom of Suite No.
48.  Machin, Alderman Machin.  Thanks.  That’s all right."

He waited.  Then he heard Marrier’s Kensingtonian voice in the
telephone, asking who he was.

"Is that Mr. Machin’s room?" he continued, imitating with a broad
farcical effect the acute Kensingtonianism of Mr. Marrier’s tones.  "Is
Miss Ra-ose Euclid there?  Oh!  She is?  Well, you tell her that Sir
John Pilgrim’s private secretary wishes to speak to her.  Thanks.  All
right.  _I’ll_ hold the line."

A pause.  Then he heard Rose’s voice in the telephone, and he resumed:

"Miss Euclid?  Yes.  Sir John Pilgrim.  I beg pardon!  Banks?  Oh,
_Banks_!  No, I’m not Banks.  I suppose you mean my predecessor.  He’s
left.  Left last week.  No, I don’t know why. Sir John instructs me to
ask if you and Mr. Trent could lunch with him to-morrow at wun-thirty?
What?  Oh!  At his house.  Yes.  I mean flat. Flat!  I said flat.  You
think you could?"

Pause.  He could hear her calling to Carlo Trent.

"Thanks.  No, I don’t know exactly," he went on again.  "But I know the
arrangement with Miss Pryde is broken off.  And Sir John wants a play at
once.  He told me that.  At once!  Yes.  ’The Orient Pearl.’  That was
the title.  At the Royal first, and then the world’s tour.  Fifteen
months at least, in all, so I gathered.  Of course I don’t speak
officially.  Well, many thanks.  Saoo good of you. I’ll tell Sir John
it’s arranged.  One-thirty to-morrow.  Good-bye!"

He hung up the telephone.  The excited, eager, effusive tones of Rose
Euclid remained in his ears. Aware of a strange phenomenon on his
forehead, he touched it.  He was perspiring.

"I’ll teach ’em a thing or two," he muttered.

And again:

"Serves her right....  ’Never, never appear at any other theatre, Mr.
Machin!’ ... ’Bended knees!’ ... ’Utterly!’ ... Cheerful partners! Oh,
cheerful partners!"

He returned to his supper-party.  Nobody said a word about the
telephoning.  But Rose Euclid and Carlo Trent looked even more like
conspirators than they did before; and Mr. Marrier’s joy in life seemed
to be just the least bit diminished.

"So sorry!" Edward Henry began hurriedly, and, without consulting the
poet’s wishes, subtly turned on all the lights.  "Now, don’t you think
we’d better discuss the question of taking up the option?  You know, it
expires on Friday."

"No," said Rose Euclid girlishly.  "It expires to-morrow.  That’s why
it’s so _fortunate_ we got hold of you to-night."

"But Mr. Bryany told me Friday.  And the date was clear enough on the
copy of the option he gave me."

"A mistake of copying," beamed Mr. Marrier. "However, it’s all right."

"Well," observed Edward Henry with heartiness, "I don’t mind telling you
that for sheer calm coolness you take the cake.  However, as Mr. Marrier
so ably says, it’s all right.  Now, I understand if I go into this
affair I can count on you absolutely, and also on Mr. Trent’s services."
He tried to talk as if he had been diplomatising with actresses and
poets all his life.

"Absolutely!" said Rose.

And Mr. Carlo Trent nodded.

"You Iscariots!" Edward Henry addressed them, in the silence of the
brain, behind his smile.  "You Iscariots!"

The photographer arrived with certain cases, and at once Rose Euclid and
Carlo Trent began instinctively to pose.

"To think," Edward Henry pleasantly reflected, "that they are hugging
themselves because Sir John Pilgrim’s secretary happened to telephone
just while I was out of the room!"




                               CHAPTER V

                            MR. SACHS TALKS

                                   I.

It was the sudden flash of the photographer’s magnesium light, plainly
felt by him through his closed lids, that somehow instantly inspired
Edward Henry to a definite and ruthless line of action.  He opened his
eyes and beheld the triumphant group, and the photographer himself,
victorious over even the triumphant, in a superb pose that suggested
that all distinguished mankind in his presence was naught but food for
the conquering camera. The photographer smiled indulgently, and his
smile said: "Having been photographed by me, you have each of you
reached the summit of your career. Be content.  Retire!  Die!  Destiny
is accomplished!"

"Mr. Machin," said Rose Euclid, "I do believe your eyes were shut!"

"So do I!" Edward Henry curtly agreed.

"But you’ll spoil the group!"

"Not a bit of it!" said Edward Henry.  "I always shut my eyes when I’m
being photographed by flash-light.  I open my mouth instead.  So long as
something’s open, what does it matter?"

The truth was that only in the nick of time had he, by a happy miracle
of ingenuity, invented a way of ruining the photograph.  The absolute
necessity for its ruin had presented itself to him rather late in the
proceedings, when the photographer had already finished arranging the
hands and shoulders of everybody in an artistic pattern.  The photograph
had to be spoilt for the imperative reason that his mother, though she
never read a newspaper, did as a fact look at a picture newspaper, _The
Daily Film_, which from pride she insisted on paying for out of her own
purse, at the rate of one halfpenny a day. Now _The Daily Film_
specialised in theatrical photographs, on which it said it spent large
sums of money; and Edward Henry in a vision had seen the historic group
in a future issue of the _Film_.  He had also, in the same vision, seen
his mother conning the said issue, and the sardonic curve of her lips as
she recognised her son therein, and he had even heard her dry, cynical,
contemptuous exclamation: "Bless us!"  He could never have looked
squarely in his mother’s face again if that group had appeared in her
chosen organ!  Her silent and grim scorn would have crushed his
self-conceit to a miserable, hopeless pulp.  Hence his resolve to render
the photograph impossible.

"Perhaps I’d better take another one?" the photographer suggested.
"Though I think Mr.--er--Machin was all right."  At the supreme crisis
the man had been too busy with his fireworks to keep a watch on every
separate eye and mouth of the assemblage.

"Of course I was all right!" said Edward Henry, almost with brutality.
"Please take that thing away as quickly as you can.  We have business to
attend to."

"Yes, sir," agreed the photographer, no longer victorious.

Edward Henry rang the bell, and two gentlemen in waiting arrived.

"Clear this table immediately!"

The tone of the command startled everybody except the gentlemen in
waiting and Mr. Seven Sachs. Rose Euclid gave vent to her nervous
giggle.  The poet and Mr. Marrier tried to appear detached and
dignified, and succeeded in appearing guiltily confused--for which they
contemned themselves. Despite their volition, the glances of all three
of them too clearly signified: "This capitalist must be humoured.  He
has an unlimited supply of actual cash, and therefore he has the right
to be peculiar.  Moreover, we know that he is a card...."  And,
curiously, Edward Henry himself was deriving great force of character
from the simple reflection that he had indeed a lot of money, real
available money, his to do utterly as he liked with it, hidden in a
secret place in that very room.  "I’ll show ’em what’s what!" he
privately mused.  "Celebrities or not, I’ll show ’em!  If they think
they can come it over me--!"

It was, I regret to say, the state of mind of a bully. Such is the
noxious influence of excessive coin!

He reproached the greatest actress and the greatest dramatic poet for
deceiving him, and quite ignored the nevertheless fairly obvious fact
that he had first deceived them.

"Now then," he began, with something of the pomposity of a chairman at a
directors’ meeting, as soon as the table had been cleared and the room
emptied of gentlemen in waiting and photographer and photographic
apparatus, "let us see exactly where we stand."

He glanced specially at Rose Euclid, who with an air of deep business
acumen returned the glance.

"Yes," she eagerly replied, as one seeking after righteousness, "_do_
let’s see."

"The option must be taken up to-morrow. Good!  That’s clear.  It came
rather casual-like, but it’s now clear.  £4,500 has to be paid down to
buy the existing building on the land and so on....  Eh?"

"Yes.  Of course Mr. Bryany told you all that, didn’t he?" said Rose
brightly.

"Mr. Bryany did tell me," Edward Henry admitted sternly.  "But if Mr.
Bryany can make a mistake in the day of the week he might make a mistake
in a few naughts at the end of a sum of money."

Suddenly Mr. Seven Sachs startled them all by emerging from his silence
with the words:

"The figure is O.K."

Instinctively Edward Henry waited for more; but no more came.  Mr. Seven
Sachs was one of those rare and disconcerting persons who do not keep on
talking after they have finished.  He resumed his tranquillity, he
re-entered into his silence, with no symptom of self-consciousness,
entirely cheerful and at ease.  And Edward Henry was aware of his
observant and steady gaze.  Edward Henry said to himself: "This man is
expecting me to behave in a remarkable way.  Bryany has been telling him
all about me, and he is waiting to see if I really am as good as my
reputation.  I have just got to be as good as my reputation!"  He looked
up at the electric chandelier, almost with regret that it was not gas.
One cannot light one’s cigarette by twisting a hundred-pound bank-note
and sticking it into an electric chandelier.  Moreover, there were some
thousands of matches on the table.  Still further, he had done the
cigarette-lighting trick once for all.  A first-class card must not
repeat himself.

"This money," Edward Henry proceeded, "has to be paid to Slossons, Lord
Woldo’s solicitors, to-morrow, Wednesday, rain or shine?"  He finished
the phrase on a note of interrogation, and as nobody offered any reply,
he rapped on the table, and repeated, half menacingly: "Rain or shine!"

"Yes," said Rose Euclid, leaning timidly forward, and taking a cigarette
from a gold case that lay on the table.  All her movements indicated an
earnest desire to be thoroughly businesslike.

"So that, Miss Euclid," Edward Henry continued impressively but with a
wilful touch of incredulity, "you are in a position to pay your share of
this money to-morrow?"

"Certainly!" said Miss Euclid.  And it was as if she had said,
aggrieved: "Can you doubt my honour?"

"To-morrow morning?"

"Ye-es."

"That is to say, to-morrow morning you will have £2,250 in actual
cash--coin, notes--actually in your possession?"

Miss Euclid’s disengaged hand was feeling out behind her again for some
surface upon which to express its emotion and hers.

"Well--" she stopped, flushing.

("These people are astounding," Edward Henry reflected, like a god.
"She’s not got the money. I knew it!")

"It’s like this, Mr. Machin," Marrier began.

"Excuse me, Mr. Marrier," Edward Henry turned on him, determined if he
could to eliminate the optimism from that beaming face.  "Any friend of
Miss Euclid’s is welcome here, but you’ve already talked about this
theatre as ’ours,’ and I just want to know where you come in."

"Where I come in?" Marrier smiled, absolutely unperturbed.  "Miss Euclid
has appointed me general manajah."

"At what salary, if it isn’t a rude question?"

"Oh!  We haven’t settled details yet.  You see the theatre isn’t built
yet."

"True!" said Edward Henry.  "I was forgetting! I was thinking for the
moment that the theatre was all ready and going to be opened to-morrow
night with ’The Orient Pearl.’  Have you had much experience of managing
theatres, Mr. Marrier?  I suppose you have."

"Eho, yes!" exclaimed Mr. Marrier.  "I began life as a lawyah’s clerk,
but--"

"So did I," Edward Henry interjected.

"How interesting!" Rose Euclid murmured with fervency, after puffing
forth a long shaft of smoke.

"However, I threw it up," Marrier went on.

"I didn’t," said Edward Henry.  "I got thrown out!"

Strange that in that moment he was positively proud of having been
dismissed from his first situation!  Strange that all the company, too,
thought the better of him for having been dismissed! Strange that
Marrier regretted that he also had not been dismissed!  But so it was.
The possession of much ready money emits a peculiar effluence in both
directions--back to the past, forward into the future.

"I threw it up," said Marrier, "because the stage had an irresistible
attraction for me.  I’d been stage-manajah for an amateur company, you
knaoo.  I found a shop as stage-manajah of a company touring ’Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.’  I stuck to that for six years, and then I threw that up
too.  Then I’ve managed one of Miss Euclid’s provincial tours. And since
I met our friend Trent, I’ve had the chance to show what my ideas about
play-producing really are.  I fancy my production of Trent’s one-act
play won’t be forgotten in a hurry....  You know--’The Nymph?’  You read
about it, didn’t you?"

"I did not," said Edward Henry.  "How long did it run?"

"Oh! it didn’t run.  It wasn’t put on for a run. It was part of one of
the Sunday-night shows of the Play-Producing Society, at the Court
Theatre. Most intellectual people in London, you know.  No such audience
anywhere else in the wahld!"  His rather chubby face glistened and
shimmered with enthusiasm.  "You bet!" he added.  "But that was only by
the way.  My real game is management--general management.  And I think I
may say I know what it is."

"Evidently!" Edward Henry concurred.  "But shall you have to give up any
other engagement in order to take charge of the Muses’ Theatre? Because
if so--"

Mr. Marrier replied:

"No."

Edward Henry observed:

"Oh!"

"But," said Marrier reassuringly, "if necessary I would throw up any
engagement--you understand me, any--in favour of the Intellectual
Theatah as I prefer to call it.  You see, as I own part of the option--"

By these last words Edward Henry was confounded, even to muteness.

"I forgot to mention, Mr. Machin," said Rose Euclid very quickly.  "I’ve
disposed of a quarter of my half of the option to Mr. Marrier.  He fully
agreed with me it was better that he should have a proper interest in
the theatre."

"Why of course!" cried Mr. Marrier, uplifted.

"Let me see," said Edward Henry, after a long breath, "a quarter--that
makes it that you have to find £562 10s, to-morrow, Mr. Marrier."

"Yes."

"To-morrow morning--you’ll be all right?"

"Well, I won’t swear for the morning, but I shall turn up with the stuff
in the afternoon anyhow. I’ve two men in tow, and one of them’s a
certainty."

"Which?"

"I don’t know which," said Mr. Marrier. "Howevah, you may count on yours
sincerely, Mr. Machin."

There was a pause.

"Perhaps I ought to tell you," Rose Euclid smiled, "perhaps I ought to
tell you that Mr. Trent is also one of our partners.  He has taken
another quarter of my half."

Edward Henry controlled himself.

"Excellent!" said he with glee.  "Mr. Trent’s money all ready too?"

"I am providing most of it--temporarily," said Rose Euclid.

"I see.  Then I understand you have your three quarters of £2,250 all
ready in hand."

She glanced at Mr. Seven Sachs.

"Have I, Mr. Sachs?"

And Mr. Sachs, after an instant’s hesitation, bowed in assent.

"Mr. Sachs is not exactly going into the speculation, but he is lending
us money on the security of our interests.  That’s the way to put it,
isn’t it, Mr. Sachs?"

Mr. Sachs once more bowed.

And Edward Henry exclaimed:

"Now I really do see!"

He gave one glance across the table at Mr. Seven Sachs, as who should
say: "And have you too allowed yourself to be dragged into this affair?
I really thought you were cleverer.  Don’t you agree with me that we’re
both fools of the most arrant description?" And under the brief glance
Mr. Seven Sachs’s calm deserted him as it had never deserted him on the
stage, where for over fifteen hundred nights he had withstood the menace
of revolvers, poison, and female treachery through three hours and four
acts without a single moment of agitation.

Apparently Miss Rose Euclid could exercise a siren’s charm upon nearly
all sorts of men.  But Edward Henry knew one sort of men upon whom she
could not exercise it; namely, the sort of men who are born and bred in
the Five Towns.  His instinctive belief in the Five Towns as the sole
cradle of hard practical common sense was never stronger than just now.
You might by wiles get the better of London and America, but not of the
Five Towns. If Rose Euclid were to go around and about the Five Towns
trying to do the siren business, she would pretty soon discover that she
was up against something rather special in the way of human nature!

Why, the probability was that these three--Rose Euclid (only a few hours
since a glorious name and legend to him), Carlo Trent, and Mr.
Marrier--could not at that moment produce even ten pounds between them!
... And Marrier offering to lay fivers! ... He scornfully pitied them.
And he was not altogether without pity for Seven Sachs, who had
doubtless succeeded in life by sheer accident and knew no more than an
infant what to do with his too easily earned money.



                                  II.


"Well," said Edward Henry, "shall I tell you what I’ve decided?"

"Please do!" Rose Euclid entreated him.

"I’ve decided to make you a present of my half of the option."

"But aren’t you going in with us?" exclaimed Rose, horror-struck.

"No, madam."

"But Mr. Bryany told us positively you were! He said it was all
arranged!"

"Mr. Bryany ought to be more careful," said Edward Henry.  "If he
doesn’t mind, he’ll be telling a downright lie some day."

"But you bought half the option!"

"Well," said Edward Henry, reasoning.  "What _is_ an option?  What does
it mean?  It means you are free to take something or leave it.  I’m
leaving it."

"But why?" demanded Mr. Marrier, gloomier.

Carlo Trent played with his eye-glasses and said not a word.

"Why?" Edward Henry replied.  "Simply because I feel I’m not fitted for
the job.  I don’t know enough.  I don’t understand.  I shouldn’t go the
right way about the affair.  For instance, I should never have guessed
by myself that it was the proper thing to settle the name of the theatre
before you’d got the lease of the land you’re going to build it on.
Then I’m old-fashioned.  I hate leaving things to the last moment; but
seemingly there’s only one proper moment in these theatrical affairs,
and that’s the very last.  I’m afraid there’d be too much trusting in
Providence for my taste.  I believe in trusting in Providence, but I
can’t bear to see Providence overworked.  And I’ve never even tried to
be intellectual, and I’m a bit frightened of poetry plays--"

"But you’ve not read my play!" Carlo Trent mutteringly protested.

"That is so," admitted Edward Henry.

"Will you read it?"

"Mr. Trent," said Edward Henry.  "I’m not so young as I was."

"We’re ruined!" sighed Rose Euclid with a tragic gesture.

"Ruined?"  Edward Henry took her up, smiling. "Nobody is ruined who
knows where he can get a square meal.  Do you mean to tell me you don’t
know where you’re going to lunch to-morrow?"  And he looked hard at her.

It was a blow.  She blenched under it.

"Oh, yes," she said, with her giggle, "I know that."

("Well you just don’t!" he answered her in his heart.  "You think you’re
going to lunch with John Pilgrim.  And you aren’t.  And it serves you
right!")

"Besides," he continued aloud, "how can you say you’re ruined when I’m
making you a present of something that I paid £100 for?"

"But where am I to find the other half of the money--£2,250?" she burst
out.  "We were depending absolutely on you for it.  If I don’t get it,
the option will be lost, and the option’s very valuable."

"All the easier to find the money then!"

"What?  In less than twenty-four hours?  It can’t be done.  I couldn’t
get it in all London."

"Mr. Marrier will get it for you ... one of his certainties!"  Edward
Henry smiled in the Five Towns’ manner.

"I might, you knaoo!" said Marrier, brightening to full hope in the
fraction of a second.

But Rose Euclid only shook her head.

"Mr. Seven Sachs, then?" Edward Henry suggested.

"I should have been delighted," said Mr. Sachs with the most perfect
gracious tranquillity.  "But I cannot find another £2,250 to-morrow."

"I shall just speak to that Mr. Bryany!" said Rose Euclid, in the
accents of homicide.

"I think you ought to," Edward Henry concurred. "But that won’t help
things.  I feel a little responsible, especially to a lady.  You have a
quarter of the whole option left in your hands, Miss Euclid.  I’ll pay
you at the same rate as Bryany sold to me.  I gave £100 for half.  Your
quarter is therefore worth £50.  Well, I’ll pay you £50."

"And then what?"

"Then let the whole affair slide."

"But that won’t help me to my theatre!" Rose Euclid said, pouting.  She
was now decidedly less unhappy than her face pretended, because Edward
Henry had reminded her of Sir John Pilgrim, and she had dreams of world
triumphs for herself and for Carlo Trent’s play.  She was almost glad to
be rid of all the worry of the horrid little prospective theatre.

"I have bank-notes," cooed Edward Henry softly.

Her head sank.

Edward Henry rose in the incomparable yellow dressing-gown and walked to
and fro a little, and then from his secret store he produced a bundle of
notes, and counted out five tens and, coming behind Rose, stretched out
his arm and laid the treasure on the table in front of her under the
brilliant chandelier.

"I don’t want you to feel you have anything against me," he cooed still
more softly.

Silence reigned.  Edward Henry resumed his chair and gazed at Rose
Euclid.  She was quite a dozen years older than his wife, and she looked
more than a dozen years older.  She had no fixed home, no husband, no
children, no regular situation. She accepted the homage of young men,
who were cleverer than herself save in one important respect. She was
always in and out of restaurants and hotels and express trains.  She was
always committing hygienic indiscretions.  She could not refrain from a
certain girlishness which, having regard to her years, her waist, and
her complexion, was ridiculous.  His wife would have been afraid of her,
and would have despised her, simultaneously.  She was coarsened by the
continual gaze of the gaping public. No two women could possibly be more
utterly dissimilar than Rose Euclid and the cloistered Nellie.... And
yet, as Rose Euclid’s hesitant fingers closed on the bank-notes with a
gesture of relief, Edward Henry had an agreeable and kindly sensation
that all women were alike, after all, in the need of a shield, a
protection, a strong and generous male hand.  He was touched by the
spectacle of Rose Euclid, as naïve as any young lass when confronted by
actual bank-notes; and he was touched also by the thought of Nellie and
the children afar off, existing in comfort and peace, but utterly,
wistfully, dependent on himself.

"And what about me?" growled Carlo Trent.

"You?"

The fellow was only a poet.  He negligently dropped him five fivers, his
share of the option’s value.

Mr. Marrier said nothing, but his eye met Edward Henry’s, and in silence
five fivers were meted out to Mr. Marrier also....  It was so easy to
delight these persons who apparently seldom set eyes on real ready
money.

"You might sign receipts, all of you, just as a matter of form," said
Edward Henry.

A little later, the three associates were off.

"As we’re both in the hotel, Mr. Sachs," said Edward Henry, "you might
stay for a chat and a drink."

Mr. Seven Sachs politely agreed.

Edward Henry accompanied the trio of worshippers and worshipped to the
door of his suite, but no further, because of his dressing-gown.  Rose
Euclid had assumed a resplendent opera-cloak. They rang imperially for
the lift.  Lackeys bowed humbly before them.  They spoke of taxicabs and
other luxuries.  They were perfectly at home in the grandeur of the
hotel.  As the illuminated lift carried them down out of sight, their
smiling heads disappearing last, they seemed exactly like persons of
extreme wealth.  And indeed for the moment they were wealthy.  They had
parted with certain hopes, but they had had a windfall; and two of them
were looking forward with absolute assurance to a profitable meal and
deal with Sir John Pilgrim on the morrow.

"Funny place, London!" said the provincial to himself as he re-entered
his suite to rejoin Mr. Seven Sachs.



                                  III.


"Well, sir," said Mr. Seven Sachs, "I have to thank you for getting me
out of a very unsatisfactory situation."

"Did you really want to get out of it?" asked Edward Henry.

Mr. Sachs replied simply.

"I did, sir.  There were too many partners for my taste."

They were seated more familiarly now in the drawing-room, being indeed
separated only by a small table upon which were glasses.  And whereas on
a night in the previous week Edward Henry had been entertained by Mr.
Bryany in a private parlour at the Turk’s Head, Hanbridge, on this night
he was in a sort repaying the welcome to Mr. Bryany’s master in a
private parlour at Wilkins’s, London.  The sole difference in favour of
Mr. Bryany was that, while Mr. Bryany provided cigarettes and whisky,
Edward Henry was providing only cigarettes and Vichy water.  Mr. Seven
Sachs had said that he never took whisky; and though Edward Henry’s
passion for Vichy water was not quite ungovernable, he thought well to
give rein to it on the present occasion, having read somewhere that
Vichy water placated the stomach.

Joseph had been instructed to retire.

"And not only that," resumed Mr. Seven Sachs, "but you’ve got a very
good thing entirely into your own hands!  Masterly, sir!  Masterly!
Why, at the end you positively had the air of doing them a favour!  You
made them believe you _were_ doing them a favour."

"And don’t you think I was?"

Mr. Sachs reflected, and then laughed.

"You were," he said.  "That’s the beauty of it. But at the same time you
were getting away with the goods!"

It was by sheer instinct, and not by learning, that Edward Henry fully
grasped, as he did, the deep significance of the American idiom employed
by Mr. Seven Sachs.  He, too, laughed, as Mr. Sachs had laughed.  He was
immeasurably flattered.  He had not been so flattered since the Countess
of Chell had permitted him to offer her China tea, meringues, and Berlin
pancakes at the Sub Rosa tea-rooms in Hanbridge--and that was a very
long time ago.

"You really _do_ think it’s a good thing?" Edward Henry ventured, for he
had not yet been convinced of the entire goodness of theatrical
enterprise near Piccadilly Circus.

Mr. Seven Sachs convinced him--not by argument, but by the sincerity of
his gestures and tones; for it was impossible to question that Mr. Seven
Sachs knew what he was talking about.  The shape of Mr. Seven Sachs’
chin was alone enough to prove that Mr. Sachs was incapable of a mere
ignorant effervescence.  Everything about Mr. Sachs was persuasive and
confidence-inspiring.  His long silences had the easy vigour of oratory,
and they served also to make his speech peculiarly impressive.
Moreover, he was a handsome and a dark man, and probably half a dozen
years younger than Edward Henry.  And the discipline of lime-light had
taught him the skill to be forever graceful. And his smile, rare enough,
was that of a boy.

"Of course," said he, "if Miss Euclid and the others had had any sense,
they might have done very well for themselves.  If you ask me, the
option alone is worth ten thousand dollars.  But then they haven’t any
sense!  And that’s all there is to it!"

"So you’d advise me to go ahead with the affair on my own?"

Mr. Seven Sachs, his black eyes twinkling, leaned forward and became
rather intimately humorous:

"You look as if you wanted advice, don’t you?" said he.

"I suppose I do, now I come to think of it!" agreed Edward Henry with a
most admirable quizzicalness; in spite of the fact that he had not
really meant to "go ahead with the affair," being in truth a little
doubtful of his capacity to handle it.

But Mr. Seven Sachs was, all unconsciously, forcing Edward Henry to
believe in his own capacities; and the two, as it were, suddenly
developed a more cordial friendliness.  Each felt the quick lifting of
the plane of their relations, and was aware of a pleasurable emotion.

"I’m moving onwards--gently onwards," crooned Edward Henry to himself.
"What price Brindley and his half-crown now?"  Londoners might call him
a provincial, and undoubtedly would call him a provincial; he admitted,
even, that he felt like a provincial in the streets of London. And yet
here he was, "doing Londoners in the eye all over the place," and
receiving the open homage of Mr. Seven Sachs, whose name was the basis
of a cosmopolitan legend.

And now he made the cardinal discovery, which marks an epoch in the life
of every man who arrives at it, that world-celebrated persons are very
like other persons.  And he was happy and rather proud in this
discovery, and began to feel a certain vague desire to tell Mr. Seven
Sachs the history of his career--or at any rate the picturesque portions
of it.  For he, too, was famous in his own sphere; and in the
drawing-room of Wilkins’s one celebrity was hobnobbing with another!
("Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Brindley!")  Yes, he was
happy, both in what he had already accomplished, and in the
contemplation of romantic adventures to come.

And yet his happiness was marred--not fatally, but quite appreciably--by
a remorse that no amount of private argument with himself would conjure
away.  Which was the more singular in that a morbid tendency to remorse
had never been among Edward Henry’s defects!  He was worrying, foolish
fellow, about the false telephone-call in which, for the purpose of
testing Rose Euclid’s loyalty to the new enterprise, he had pretended to
be the new private secretary of Sir John Pilgrim.  Yet what harm had it
done?  And had it not done a lot of good?  Rose Euclid and her youthful
worshipper were no worse off than they had been before being victimised
by the deceit of the telephone-call.  Prior to the call they had assumed
themselves to be deprived forever of the benefits which association with
Sir John Pilgrim could offer, and as a fact they were deprived forever
of such benefits.  Nothing changed there!  Before the call they had had
no hope of lunching with the enormous Sir John on the morrow, and as a
fact they would not lunch with the enormous Sir John on the morrow.
Nothing changed there either!  Again, in no event would Edward Henry
have joined the trio in order to make a quartette in partnership.  Even
had he been as convinced of Rose’s loyalty as he was convinced of her
disloyalty, he would never have been rash enough to co-operate with such
a crew.  Again, nothing changed!

On the other hand, he had acquired an assurance of the artiste’s
duplicity, which assurance had made it easier for him to disappoint her,
while the prospect of a business repast with Sir John had helped her to
bear the disappointment as a brave woman should.  It was true that on
the morrow, about lunch-time, Rose Euclid and Carlo Trent might have to
live through a few rather trying moments, and they would certainly be
very angry; but these drawbacks would have been more than compensated
for in advance by the pleasures of hope.  And had they not between them
pocketed seventy-five pounds which they had stood to lose?

Such reasoning was unanswerable, and his remorse did not attempt to
answer it.  His remorse was not open to reason; it was one of those
stupid, primitive sentiments which obstinately persist in the refined
and rational fabric of modern humanity.

He was just sorry for Rose Euclid.

"Do you know what I did?" he burst out confidentially, and confessed the
whole telephone trick to Mr. Seven Sachs.

Mr. Seven Sachs, somewhat to Edward Henry’s surprise, expressed high
admiration of the device.

"A bit mean, though, don’t you think?" Edward Henry protested weakly.

"Not at all!" cried Mr. Sachs.  "You got the goods on her.  And she
deserved it."

(Again this enigmatic and mystical word "goods"!  But he understood it.)

Thus encouraged, he was now quite determined to give Mr. Seven Sachs a
brief episodic account of his career.  A fair conversational opening was
all he wanted in order to begin.

"I wonder what will happen to her--ultimately?" he said, meaning to work
back from the ends of careers to their beginnings, and so to himself.

"Rose Euclid?"

"Yes."

Mr. Sachs shook his head compassionately.

"How did Mr. Bryany get in with her?" asked Edward Henry.

"Bryany is a highly peculiar person," said Mr. Seven Sachs familiarly.
"He’s all right so long as you don’t unstrap him.  He was born to
convince newspaper reporters of his own greatness."

"I had a bit of talk with him myself," said Edward Henry.

"Oh, yes!  He told me all about you."

"But _I_ never told him anything about myself," said Edward Henry
quickly.

"No, but he has eyes, you know, and ears too. Seems to me the people of
the Five Towns do little else of a night but discuss you, Mr. Machin.
_I_ heard a good bit when _I_ was down there, though I don’t go about
much when I’m on the road. I reckon I could write a whole biography of
you."

Edward Henry smiled self-consciously.  He was of course enraptured, but
at the same time it was disappointing to find Mr. Sachs already so fully
informed as to the details of his career.  However, he did not intend to
let that prevent him from telling the story afresh, in his own manner.

"I suppose you’ve had your adventures too," he remarked with
nonchalance, partly from politeness, but mainly in order to avoid the
appearance of hurry in his egotism.



                                  IV.


"You bet I have!" Mr. Seven Sachs cordially agreed, abandoning the end
of a cigarette, putting his hands behind his head, and crossing his
legs.

Whereupon there was a brief pause.

"I remember--" Edward Henry began.

"I dare say you’ve heard--" began Mr. Seven Sachs simultaneously.

They were like two men who by inadvertence had attempted to pass through
a narrow doorway abreast.  Edward Henry, as the host, drew back.

"I beg your pardon!" he apologised.

"Not at all," said Seven Sachs.  "I was only going to say you’ve
probably heard that I was always up against Archibald Florance."

"Really!" murmured Edward Henry, impressed in spite of himself; for the
renown of Archibald Florance exceeded that of Seven Sachs as the sun the
moon, and was older and more securely established than it as the sun the
moon.  The renown of Rose Euclid was as naught to it.  Doubtful it was
whether, in the annals of modern histrionics, the grandeur and the
romance of that American name could be surpassed by any renown save that
of the incomparable Henry Irving.  The retirement of Archibald Florance
from the stage a couple of years earlier had caused crimson gleams of
sunset splendour to shoot across the Atlantic and irradiate even the
Garrick Club, London, so that the members thereof had to shade their
offended eyes. Edward Henry had never seen Archibald Florance, but it
was not necessary to have seen him in order to appreciate the majesty of
his glory.  No male in the history of the world was ever more
photographed, and few have been the subject of more anecdotes.

"I expect he’s a wealthy chap in his old age," said Edward Henry.

"Wealthy!" exclaimed Mr. Sachs.  "He’s the richest actor in America, and
that’s saying in the world.  He had the greatest reputation.  He’s still
the handsomest man in the United States--that’s admitted--with his white
hair!  They used to say he was the cruellest, but it’s not so.  Though
of course he could be a perfect terror with his companies."

"And so you knew Archibald Florance?"

"You bet I did.  He never had any friends--never--but I knew him as well
as anybody could. Why, in San Francisco, after the show, I’ve walked
with him back to his hotel, and he’s walked with me back to mine, and so
on, and so on, till three or four o’clock in the morning.  You see, we
couldn’t stop until it happened that he finished a cigar at the exact
moment when we got to his hotel door.  If the cigar wasn’t finished,
then he must needs stroll back a bit, and before I knew where I was he’d
be lighting a fresh one.  He smoked the finest cigars in America.  I
remember him telling me they cost him three dollars apiece."

And Edward Henry then perceived another profound truth, his second
cardinal discovery on that notable evening; namely, that no matter how
high you rise, you will always find that others have risen higher.  Nay,
it is not until you have achieved a considerable peak that you are able
to appreciate the loftiness of those mightier summits.  He himself was
high, and so he could judge the greater height of Seven Sachs; and it
was only through the greater height of Seven Sachs that he could form an
adequate idea of the pinnacle occupied by the unique Archibald Florance.
Honestly, he had never dreamt that there existed a man who habitually
smoked twelve-shilling cigars--and yet he reckoned to know a thing or
two about cigars!

"I am nothing!" he thought modestly.  Nevertheless, though the savour of
the name of Archibald Florance was agreeable, he decided that he had
heard enough for the moment about Archibald Florance, and that he would
relate to Mr. Sachs the famous episode of his own career in which the
Countess of Chell and a mule had so prominently performed.

"I remember--" he recommenced.

"My first encounter with Archibald Florance was very funny," proceeded
Mr. Seven Sachs, blandly deaf.  "I was starving in New York,--trying to
sell a new razor on commission,--and I was determined to get on to the
stage.  I had one visiting card left--just one.  I wrote ’Important’ on
it, and sent it up to Wunch.  I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of
Wunch.  Wunch was Archibald Florence’s stage-manager, and nearly as
famous as Archibald himself.  Well, Wunch sent for me up-stairs to his
room, but when he found I was only the usual youngster after the usual
job he just had me thrown out of the theatre.  He said I’d no right to
put ’Important’ on a visiting card.  ’Well,’ I said to myself, ’I’m
going to get back into that theatre somehow!’  So I went up to
Archibald’s private house--Sixtieth Street I think it was, and asked to
see him, and I saw him.  When I got into his room, he was writing.  He
kept on writing for some minutes, and then he swung round on his chair.

"’And what can I do for you, sir?’ he said.

"’Do you want any actors, Mr. Florance?’ I said.

"’Are you an actor?’ he said.

"’I want to be one,’ I said.

"’Well,’ he said, ’there’s a school round the corner.’

"’Well,’ I said, ’you might give me a card of introduction, Mr.
Florance.’

"He gave me the card.  I didn’t take it to the school.  I went straight
back to the theatre with it, and had it sent up to Wunch.  It just said,
’Introducing Mr. Sachs, a young man anxious to get on.’  Wunch took it
for a positive order to find me a place.  The company was full, so he
threw out one poor devil of a super to make room for me. Curious
thing--old Wunchy got it into his head that I was a _protégé_ of
Archibald’s, and he always looked after me.  What d’ye think about
that?"

"Brilliant!" said Edward Henry.  And it was! The simplicity of the thing
was what impressed him. Since winning a scholarship at school by
altering the number of marks opposite his name on a paper lying on the
master’s desk, Edward Henry had never achieved advancement by a device
so simple.  And he thought: "I am nothing!  The Five Towns is nothing!
All that one hears about Americans and the United States is true.  As
far as getting on goes, they can make rings round us.  Still, I shall
tell him about the countess and the mule--"

"Yes," continued Mr. Seven Sachs, "Wunch was very kind to me.  But he
was pretty well down and out, and he left, and Archibald got a new
stage-manager, and I was promoted to do a bit of assistant
stage-managing.  But I got no increase of salary.  There were two women
stars in the play Archibald was doing then--’The Forty-Niners.’
Romantic drama, you know!  Melodrama you’d call it over here.  He never
did any other sort of play.  Well, these two women stars were about
equal, and when the curtain fell on the first act they’d both make a
bee-line for Archibald to see who’d get to him first and engage him in
talk.  They were jealous enough, of each other to kill. Anybody could
see that Archibald was frightfully bored, but he couldn’t escape.  They
got him on both sides, you see, and he just _had_ to talk to ’em, both
at once. I used to be fussing around fixing the properties for the next
act.  Well, one night he comes up to me, Archibald does, and he says:

"’Mr.--what’s your name?’

"’Sachs, sir,’ I says.

"’You notice when those two ladies come up to me after the first act.
Well, when you see them talking to me, I want you to come right along
and interrupt,’ he says.

"’What shall I say, sir?’

"’Tap me on the shoulder, and say I’m wanted about something very
urgent.  You see?’

"So the next night when those women got hold of him, sure enough, I went
up between them and tapped him on the shoulder.  ’Mr. Florance,’ I said,
’something very urgent.’  He turned on me and scowled: ’What is it?’ he
said, and he looked very angry.  It was a bit of the best acting the old
man ever did in his life.  It was so good that at first I thought it was
real.  He said again louder, ’What is it?’  So I said, ’Well, Mr.
Florance, the most urgent thing in this theatre is that I should have an
increase in salary!’  I guess I licked the stuffing out of him that
time."

Edward Henry gave vent to one of those cordial and violent guffaws which
are a specialty of the humorous side of the Five Towns.  And he said to
himself: "I should never have thought of anything as good as that."

"And did you get it?" he asked.

"The old man said not a word," Mr. Seven Sachs went on in the same even
tranquil smiling voice.  "But next pay-day I found I’d got a rise of ten
dollars a week.  And not only that, but Mr. Florance offered me a
singing part in his new drama, if I could play the mandolin.  I
naturally told him I’d played the mandolin all my life.  I went out and
bought a mandolin and hired a teacher. He wanted to teach me the
mandolin, but I only wanted him to teach me that one accompaniment. So I
fired him, and practised by myself night and day for a week.  I got
through all the rehearsals without ever singing that song.  Cleverest
dodging I ever did!  On the first night I was so nervous I could
scarcely hold the mandolin.  I’d never played the infernal thing before
anybody at all--only up in my bedroom.  I struck the first chord, and
found the darned instrument was all out of tune with the orchestra.  So
I just pretended to play it, and squawked away with my song, and never
let my fingers touch the strings at all.  Old Florance was waiting for
me in the wings.  I knew he was going to fire me.  But no!  ’Sachs,’ he
said, ’that accompaniment was the most delicate piece of playing I ever
heard.  I congratulate you.’  He was quite serious.  Everybody said the
same!  Luck, eh?"

"I should say so," said Edward Henry, gradually beginning to be
interested in the odyssey of Mr. Seven Sachs.  "I remember a funny thing
that happened to me--"

"However," Mr. Sachs swept smoothly along, "that piece was a failure.
And Archibald arranged to take a company to Europe with ’Forty-Miners.’
And I was left out!  This rattled me, specially after the way he liked
my mandolin-playing.  So I went to see him about it in his dressing-room
one night, and I charged around a bit.  He did rattle me!  Then I raided
him.  I would get an answer out of him.  He said:

"’I’m not in the habit of being cross-examined in my own dressing-room.’

"I didn’t care what happened then, so I said:

"’And I’m not in the habit of being treated as you’re treating me.’

"All of a sudden he became quite quiet, and patted me on the shoulder.
’You’re getting on very well, Sachs,’ he said.  ’You’ve only been at it
one year.  It’s taken me twenty-five years to get where I am.’

"However, I was too angry to stand for that sort of talk.  I said to
him:

"’I dare say you’re a very great and enviable man, Mr. Florance, but I
propose to save fifteen years on your twenty-five.  I’ll equal or better
your position in ten years.’

"He shoved me out--just shoved me out of the room....  It was that that
made me turn to play-writing.  Florance wrote his own plays sometimes,
but it was only his acting and his face that saved them.  And they were
too American.  He never did really well outside America except in one
play, and that wasn’t his own.  Now, I was out after money.  And I still
am.  I wanted to please the largest possible public.  So I guessed there
was nothing for it but the universal appeal.  I never write a play that
won’t appeal to England, Germany, France, just as well as to America.
America’s big, but it isn’t big enough for me....  Well, as I was
saying, soon after that I got a one-act play produced at Hannibal,
Missouri.  And the same week there was a company at another theatre
there playing the old man’s ’Forty-Niners.’  And the next morning the
theatrical critic’s article in the Hannibal _Courier-Post_ was headed:
’Rival attractions. Archibald Florance’s "Forty-Niners" and new play by
Seven Sachs.’  I cut that heading out and sent it to the old man in
London, and I wrote under it, ’See how far I’ve got in six months.’
When he came back he took me into his company again.... What price that,
eh?"

Edward Henry could only nod his head.  The customarily silent Seven
Sachs had little by little subdued him to an admiration as mute as it
was profound.

"Nearly five years after that I got a Christmas card from old Florance.
It had the usual printed wishes,--’Merriest possible Christmas, and so
on,’--but underneath that Archibald had written in pencil, ’You’ve still
five years to go.’  That made me roll my sleeves up, as you may say.
Well, a long time after that I was standing at the corner of Broadway
and Forty-fourth Street, and looking at my own name in electric letters
on the Criterion Theatre.  First time I’d ever seen it in electric
letters on Broadway.  It was the first night of ’Overheard.’  Florance
was playing at the Hudson Theatre, which is a bit higher up Forty-fourth
Street, and _his_ name was in electric letters too, but further off
Broadway than mine.  I strolled up, just out of idle curiosity, and
there the old man was standing in the porch of the theatre, all alone!
’Hullo, Sachs,’ he said, ’I’m glad I’ve seen you. It’s saved me
twenty-five cents.’  I asked how.  He said, ’I was just going to send
you a telegram of congratulations.’  He liked me, old Archibald did. He
still does.  But I hadn’t done with him.  I went to stay with him at his
house on Long Island in the spring.  ’Excuse me, Mr. Florance,’ I says
to him.  ’How many companies have you got on the road?’  He said, ’Oh!
I haven’t got many now. Five, I think.’  ’Well,’ I says.  ’I’ve got six
here in the United States, two in England, three in Austria, and one in
Italy.’  He said, ’Have a cigar, Sachs; you’ve got the goods on me!’  He
was living in that magnificent house all alone, with a whole regiment of
servants."



                                   V.


"Well," said Edward Henry, "you’re a great man!"

"No, I’m not," said Mr. Seven Sachs.  "But my income is four hundred
thousand dollars a year, and rising.  I’m out after the stuff, that’s
all."

"I say you are a great man!" Edward Henry repeated.  Mr. Sachs’ recital
had inspired him. He kept saying to himself: "And I’m a great man too.
And I’ll show ’em."

Mr. Sachs, having delivered himself of his load, had now lapsed
comfortably back into his original silence, and was prepared to listen.
But Edward Henry somehow had lost the desire to enlarge on his own
variegated past.  He was absorbed in the greater future.

At length he said very distinctly:

"You honestly think I could run a theatre?"

"You were born to run a theatre," said Seven Sachs.

Thrilled, Edward Henry responded:

"Then I’ll write to those lawyer people, Slossons, and tell ’em I’ll be
around with the brass about eleven to-morrow."

Mr. Sachs rose.  A clock had delicately chimed two.

"If ever you come to New York, and I can do anything for you--" said Mr.
Sachs heartily.

"Thanks," said Edward Henry.  They were shaking hands.  "I say," Edward
Henry went on, "there’s one thing I want to ask you.  Why _did_ you
promise to back Rose Euclid and her friends? You must surely have
known--"  He threw up his hands.

Mr. Sachs answered:

"I’ll be frank with you.  It was her cousin that persuaded me into
it--Elsie April."

"Elsie April?  Who’s she?"

"Oh!  You must have seen them about together--her and Rose Euclid.
They’re nearly always together."

"I saw her in the restaurant here to-day with a rather jolly girl--blue
hat."

"That’s the one.  As soon as you’ve made her acquaintance you’ll
understand what I mean," said Mr. Seven Sachs.

"Ah!  But I’m not a bachelor like you," Edward Henry smiled archly.

"Well, you’ll see when you meet her," said Mr. Sachs. Upon which
enigmatic warning he departed, and was lost in the immense glittering
nocturnal silence of Wilkins’s.

Edward Henry sat down to write to Slossons by the three A.M. post.  But
as he wrote he kept saying to himself: "So Elsie April’s her name, is
it? And she actually persuaded Sachs--Sachs--to make a fool of himself!"




                               CHAPTER VI

                       LORD WOLDO AND LADY WOLDO

                                  II.

The next morning Joseph, having opened wide the window, informed his
master that the weather was bright and sunny, and Edward Henry arose
with just that pleasant degree of fatigue which persuades one that one
is, if anything, rather more highly vitalised than usual.  He sent for
Mr. Bryany, as for a domestic animal, and Mr. Bryany, ceremoniously
attired, was received by a sort of jolly king who happened to be
trimming his beard in the royal bathroom, but who was too good-natured
to keep Mr. Bryany waiting.  It is remarkable how the habit of royalty,
having once taken root, will flourish in the minds of quite
unmonarchical persons.  Edward Henry first enquired after the health of
Mr. Seven Sachs, and then obtained from Mr. Bryany all remaining papers
and trifles of information concerning the affair of the option.
Whereupon Mr. Bryany, apparently much elated by the honour of an
informal reception, effusively retired.  And Edward Henry too was so
elated, and his faith in life so renewed and invigorated that he said to
himself:

"It might be worth while to shave my beard off after all!"

As in his electric brougham he drove along muddy and shining Piccadilly,
he admitted that Joseph’s account of the weather had been very accurate.
The weather was magnificent; it presented the best features of summer
combined with the salutary pungency of autumn.  And flags were flying
over the establishments of tobacconists, soothsayers, and insurance
companies in Piccadilly.  And the sense of empire was in the very air,
like an intoxication. And there was no place like London.  When,
however, having run through Piccadilly into streets less superb, he
reached the Majestic, it seemed to him that the Majestic was not a part
of London, but a bit of the provinces surrounded by London.  He was very
disappointed with the Majestic, and took his letters from the clerk with
careless condescension. In a few days the Majestic had sunk from being
one of "London’s huge caravanserais" to the level of a swollen Turk’s
Head.  So fragile are reputations!

From the Majestic, Edward Henry drove back into the regions of Empire,
between Piccadilly and Regent Street, and deigned to call upon his
tailors. A morning suit which he had commanded being miraculously
finished, he put it on, and was at once not only spectacularly but
morally regenerated. The old suit, though it had cost five guineas in
its time, looked a paltry and a dowdy thing as it lay, flung down
anyhow, on one of Messrs. Quayther and Cuthering’s cane chairs in the
mirrored cubicle where baronets and even peers showed their braces to
the benign Mr. Cuthering.

"I want to go to Piccadilly Circus now.  Stop at the fountain," said
Edward Henry to his chauffeur. He gave the order somewhat defiantly,
because he was a little self-conscious in the new and gleaming suit, and
because he had an absurd idea that the chauffeur might guess that he, a
provincial from the Five Towns, was about to venture into West End
theatrical enterprise, and sneer at him accordingly.

But the chauffeur merely touched his cap with an indifferent lofty
gesture, as if to say:

"Be at ease.  I have driven more persons more moonstruck even than you.
Human eccentricity has long since ceased to surprise me."

The fountain in Piccadilly Circus was the gayest thing in London.  It
mingled the fresh tingling of water with the odour and flame of autumn
blossoms and the variegated colours of shawled women who passed their
lives on its margin engaged in the commerce of flowers.  Edward Henry
bought an aster from a fine, bold, red-cheeked, blowsy, dirty wench with
a baby in her arms, and left some change for the baby.  He was in a very
tolerant and charitable mood, and could excuse the sins and the
stupidity of all mankind.  He reflected forgivingly that Rose Euclid and
her friends had perhaps not displayed an abnormal fatuity in discussing
the name of the theatre before they had got the lease of the site for
it.  Had not he himself bought all the option without having even seen
the site?  The fact was that he had had no leisure in his short royal
career for such details as seeing the site.  He was now about to make
good the omission.

It is a fact that as he turned northward from Piccadilly Circus, to the
right of the County Fire Office, in order to spy out the land upon which
his theatre was to be built, he hesitated, under the delusion that all
the passers-by were staring at him! He felt just as he might have felt
had he been engaged upon some scheme nefarious.  He even went back and
pretended to examine the windows of the County Fire Office.  Then,
glancing self-consciously about, he discerned--not unnaturally--the
words "Regent Street" on a sign.

"There you are!" he murmured with a thrill. "There you are!  There’s
obviously only one name for that theatre--’The Regent.’  It’s close to
Regent Street.  No other theatre is called ’The Regent.’  Nobody before
ever had the idea of ’Regent’ as a name for a theatre.  ’Muses’ indeed!
... ’Intellectual!’ ... ’The Regent Theatre!’  How well it comes off the
tongue!  It’s a great name!  It’ll be the finest name of any theatre in
London!  And it took yours truly to think of it!"

Then he smiled privately at his own weakness.... He too, like the
despised Rose, was baptising the unborn!  Still, he continued to dream
of the theatre, and began to picture to himself the ideal theatre.  He
discovered that he had quite a number of startling ideas about
theatre-construction, based on his own experience as a playgoer.

When, with new courage, he directed his feet towards the site, upon
which he knew there was an old chapel known as Queen’s Glasshouse
Chapel, whose ownership had slipped from the nerveless hand of a dying
sect of dissenters, he could not find the site, and he could not see the
chapel.  For an instant he was perturbed by a horrid suspicion that he
had been victimised by a gang of swindlers posing as celebrated persons.
Everything was possible in this world and century.  None of the people
who had appeared in the transaction had resembled his previous
conceptions of such people! And confidence-thieves always operated in
the grandest hotels!  He immediately decided that if the sequel should
prove him to be a simpleton and gull he would at any rate be a silent
simpleton and gull.  He would stoically bear the loss of two hundred
pounds, and breathe no word of woe.

But then he remembered with relief that he had genuinely recognised both
Rose Euclid and Seven Sachs; and also that Mr. Bryany, among other
documents, had furnished him with a photograph of the chapel and
surrounding property.  The chapel therefore existed.  He had a plan in
his pocket.  He now opened this plan and tried to consult it in the
middle of the street, but his agitation was such that he could not make
out on it which was north and which was south.  After he had been nearly
prostrated by a taxicab, a policeman came up to him and said with all
the friendly disdain of a London policeman addressing a provincial:

"Safer to look at that on the pavement, sir!"

Edward Henry glanced up from the plan.

"I was trying to find the Queen’s Glasshouse Chapel, Officer," said he.
"Have you ever heard of it?"  (In Bursley, members of the town council
always flattered members of the force by addressing them as "Officer";
and Edward Henry knew exactly the effective intonation.)

"It _was there_, sir," said the policeman, less disdainful, pointing to
a narrow hoarding behind which could be seen the back walls of high
buildings in Shaftesbury Avenue.  "They’ve just finished pulling it
down."

"Thank you," said Edward Henry quietly, with a superb and successful
effort to keep as much colour in his face as if the policeman had not
dealt him a dizzying blow.

He then walked towards the hoarding, but could scarcely feel the ground
under his feet.  From a wide aperture in the palisades a cartful of
earth was emerging; it creaked and shook as it was dragged by a
labouring horse over loose planks into the roadway; a whip-cracking
carter hovered on its flank.  Edward Henry approached the aperture and
gazed within.  An elegant young man stood solitary inside the hoarding
and stared at a razed expanse of land in whose furthest corner some
navvies were digging a hole....

The site!

But what did this sinister destructive activity mean?  Nobody was
entitled to interfere with property on which he, Alderman Machin, held
an unexpired option!  But was it the site?  He perused the plan again
with more care.  Yes, there could be no doubt that it was the site.  His
eye roved round, and he admitted the justice of the boast that an
electric sign displayed at the southern front corner of the theatre
would be visible from Piccadilly Circus, lower Regent Street,
Shaftesbury Avenue, etc.  He then observed a large noticeboard, raised
on posts above the hoardings, and read the following:

                                 _Site
                                 of the
                        First New Thought Church
                       to be opened next Spring.
                         Subscriptions invited.
                    Rollo Wrissell, Senior Trustee.
                        Ralph Alloyd, Architect.
                       Dicks and Pato, Builders._

The name of Rollo Wrissell seemed familiar to him, and after a few
moments’ searching he recalled that Rollo Wrissell was one of the
trustees and executors of the late Lord Woldo, the other being the
widow, and the mother of the new Lord Woldo. In addition to the
lettering, the notice-board held a graphic representation of the First
New Thought Church as it would be when completed.

"Well," said Edward Henry, not perhaps unjustifiably, "this really is a
bit thick!  Here I’ve got an option on a plot of land for building a
theatre, and somebody else has taken it to put up a church!"

He ventured inside the hoarding, and, addressing the elegant young man,
asked:

"You got anything to do with this, Mister?"

"Well," said the young man, smiling humorously, "I’m the architect.
It’s true that nobody ever pays any attention to an architect in these
days."

"Oh!  You’re Mr. Alloyd?"

"I am."

Mr. Alloyd had black hair, intensely black, changeful eyes, and the
expressive mouth of an actor.

"I thought they were going to build a theatre here," said Edward Henry.

"I wish they had been!" said Mr. Alloyd.  "I’d just like to design a
theatre!  But of course I shall never get the chance."

"Why not?"

"I know I sha’n’t," Mr. Alloyd insisted with gloomy disgust.  "Only
obtained this job by sheer accident! ... You got any ideas about
theatres?"

"Well, I have," said Edward Henry.

Mr. Alloyd turned on him with a sardonic and half-benevolent gleam.

"And what are your ideas about theatres?"

"Well," said Edward Henry, "I should like to meet an architect who had
thoroughly got it into his head that when people pay for seats to see a
play they want to be able to _see_ it, and not just get a look at it now
and then over other people’s heads and round corners of boxes and
things.  In most theatres that I’ve been in, the architects seemed to
think that iron pillars and wooden heads are transparent.  Either that,
or the architects were rascals. Same with hearing.  The pit costs half a
crown, and you don’t pay half a crown to hear glasses rattled in a bar,
or motor-omnibuses rushing down the street.  I was never yet in a London
theatre where the architect had really understood that what the people
in the pit wanted to hear was the play, and nothing but the play."

"You’re rather hard on us," said Mr. Alloyd.

"Not so hard as you are on _us_!" said Edward Henry.  "And then
draughts!  I suppose you think a draught on the back of the neck is good
for us! ... But of course you’ll say all this has nothing to do with
architecture!"

"Oh, no, I sha’n’t!  Oh, no, I sha’n’t!" exclaimed Mr. Alloyd.  "I quite
agree with you!"

"You _do_?"

"Certainly.  You seem to be interested in theatres?"

"I am a bit."

"You come from the North?"

"No, I don’t," said Edward Henry.  Mr. Alloyd had no right to be aware
that he was not a Londoner.

"I beg your pardon."

"I come from the Midlands."

"Oh! ... Have you seen the Russian ballet?"

Edward Henry had not, nor heard of it. "Why?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Mr. Alloyd.  "Only I saw it the night before last in
Paris.  You never saw such dancing.  It’s enchanted--enchanted!  The
most lovely thing I ever saw in my life.  I couldn’t sleep for it.  Not
that I ever sleep very well!  I merely thought, as you were interested
in theatres--and Midland people are so enterprising! ... Have a
cigarette?"

Edward Henry, who had begun to feel sympathetic, was somewhat repelled
by these odd last remarks.  After all the man, though human enough, was
an utter stranger.

"No, thanks," he said.  "And so you’re going to put up a church here?"

"Yes."

"Well, I wonder whether you are."

He walked abruptly away under Alloyd’s riddling stare, and he could
almost hear the man saying, "Well, he’s a queer lot, if you like."

At the corner of the site, below the spot where his electric sign was to
have been, he was stopped by a well-dressed middle aged lady who bore a
bundle of papers.

"Will you buy a paper for the cause?" she suggested in a pleasant,
persuasive tone.  "One penny."

He obeyed, and she handed him a small blue-printed periodical of which
the title was, _Azure_, "the Organ of the New Thought Church."  He
glanced at it, puzzled, and then at the middle-aged lady.

"Every penny of profit goes to the Church-Building Fund," she said, as
if in defence of her action.

Edward Henry burst out laughing; but it was a nervous, half-hysterical
laugh that he laughed.



                                  II.


In Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he descended from his brougham in
front of the offices of Messrs. Slosson, Hodge, Budge, Slosson,
Maveringham, Slosson, and Vulto, Solicitors, known in the profession by
the compendious abbreviation of Slossons. Edward Henry, having been a
lawyer’s clerk some twenty-five years earlier, was aware of Slossons.
Although on the strength of his youthful clerkship he claimed, and was
admitted, to possess a very special knowledge of the law,--enough to
silence argument when his opponent did not happen to be an actual
solicitor,--he did not in truth possess a very special knowledge of the
law,--how should he, seeing that he had only been a practitioner of
shorthand?--but the fame of Slosson he positively was acquainted with!
He had even written letters to the mighty Slossons.

Every lawyer and lawyer’s clerk in the realm knew the greatness of
Slossons, and crouched before it, and also, for the most part, impugned
its righteousness with sneers.  For Slossons acted for the ruling
classes of England, who only get value for their money when they are
buying something that they can see, smell, handle, or intimidate--such
as a horse, a motor-car, a dog, or a lackey.  Slossons, those crack
solicitors, like the crack nerve specialists in Harley Street and the
crack fortune-tellers in Bond Street, sold their invisible, inodorous,
and intangible wares of advice at double, treble, or decuple their
worth, according to the psychology of the customer.  They were great
bullies.  And they were, further, great money-lenders--on behalf of
their wealthier clients.  In obedience to a convenient theory that it is
imprudent to leave money too long in one place, they were continually
calling in mortgages and re-lending the sums so collected on fresh
investments, thus achieving two bills of costs on each transaction, and
sometimes three, besides employing an army of valuers, surveyors, and
mortgage-insurance brokers.  In short, Slossons had nothing to learn
about the art of self-enrichment.

Three vast motor-cars waited in front of their ancient door, and Edward
Henry’s hired electric vehicle was diminished to a trifle.

He began by demanding the senior partner, who was denied to him by an
old clerk with a face like a stone wall.  Only his brutal Midland
insistence, and the mention of the important letter which he had written
to the firm in the middle of the night, saved him from the ignominy of
seeing no partner at all.  At the end of the descending ladder of
partners he clung desperately to Mr. Vulto, and he saw Mr. Vulto--a
youngish and sarcastic person with blue eyes, lodged in a dark room at
the back of the house.  It occurred fortunately that his letter had been
allotted to precisely Mr. Vulto for the purpose of being answered.

"You got my letter?" said Edward Henry cheerfully as he sat down at Mr.
Vulto’s flat desk on the side opposite from Mr. Vulto.

"We got it, but frankly we cannot make head or tail of it! ... _What_
option?"  Mr. Vulto’s manner was crudely sarcastic.

"_This_ option!" said Edward Henry, drawing papers from his pocket and
putting down the right paper in front of Mr. Vulto with an
uncompromising slap.

Mr. Vulto picked up the paper with precautions, as if it were a
contagion, and, assuming eye-glasses, perused it with his mouth open.

"We know nothing of this," said Mr. Vulto, and it was as though he had
added, "Therefore this does not exist."  He glanced with sufferance at
the window, which offered a close-range view of a whitewashed wall.

"Then you weren’t in the confidence of your client?"

"The late Lord Woldo?"

"Yes."

"Pardon me."

"Obviously you weren’t in his confidence as regards this particular
matter."

"As you say," said Mr. Vulto with frigid irony.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"Well--nothing."  Mr. Vulto removed his eye-glasses and stood up.

"Well, good morning.  I’ll walk round to my solicitors."  Edward Henry
seized the option.

"That will be simpler," said Mr. Vulto.  Slossons much preferred to deal
with lawyers than with laymen, because it increased costs and vitalised
the profession.

At that moment a stout, red-faced, and hoary man puffed very
authoritatively into the room.

"Vulto," he cried sharply, "Mr. Wrissell’s here. Didn’t they tell you?"

"Yes, Mr. Slosson," answered Vulto, suddenly losing all his sarcastic
quality and becoming a very junior partner.  "I was just engaged with
Mr.--" (he paused to glance at his desk)--"Machin, whose singular letter
we received this morning about an alleged option on the lease of the
chapel-site at Piccadilly Circus--the Woldo estate, sir.  You remember,
sir?"

"This the man?" enquired Mr. Slosson, ex-president of the Law Society,
with a jerk of the thumb.

Edward Henry said: "This is the man."

"Well," said Mr. Slosson, lifting his chin and still puffing, "it would
be extremely interesting to hear his story, at any rate.  I was just
telling Mr. Wrissell about it.  Come this way, sir.  I’ve heard some
strange things in my time, but--"  He stopped.  "Please follow me, sir,"
he ordained.

"I’m dashed if I’ll follow you!" Edward Henry desired to say, but he had
not the courage to say it.  And because he was angry with himself he
determined to make matters as unpleasant as possible for the innocent
Mr. Slosson, who was used to bullying, and so well paid for bullying,
that really no blame could be apportioned to him.  It would have been as
reasonable to censure an ordinary person for breathing as to censure Mr.
Slosson for bullying. And so Edward Henry was steeling himself: "I’ll do
him in the eye for that, even if it costs me every cent I’ve got."  (A
statement characterised by poetical licence!)



                                  III.


Mr. Slosson, senior, heard Edward Henry’s story, but seemingly did not
find it quite as interesting as he had prophesied it would be.  When
Edward Henry had finished the old man drummed on an enormous table, and
said:

"Yes, yes.  And then?"  His manner was far less bullying than in the
room of Mr. Vulto.

"It’s your turn now, Mr. Slosson," said Edward Henry.

"My turn?  How?"

"To go on with the story."  He glanced at the clock.  "I’ve brought it
up to date--eleven fifteen o’clock this morning, _anno domini_."  And as
Mr. Slosson continued to drum on the table and to look out of the
window, Edward Henry also drummed on the table and looked out of the
window.

The chamber of the senior partner was a very different matter from Mr.
Vulto’s.  It was immense. It was not disfigured by japanned boxes
inartistically lettered in white, as are most lawyers’ offices. Indeed,
in aspect it resembled one of the cosier rooms in a small and decaying
but still comfortable club. It had easy chairs and cigar-boxes.
Moreover, the sun got into it, and there was a view of the comic yet
stately Victorian Gothic of the Law Courts. The sun enheartened Edward
Henry.  And he felt secure in an unimpugnable suit of clothes; in the
shape of his collar, the colour of his necktie, the style of his
creaseless boots; and in the protuberance of his pocketbook in his
pocket.

As Mr. Slosson had failed to notice the competition of his drumming, he
drummed still louder. Whereupon Mr. Slosson stopped drumming. Edward
Henry gazed amiably around.  Right at the back of the room, before a
back window that gave on the whitewashed wall, a man was rapidly putting
his signature to a number of papers.  But Mr. Slosson had ignored the
existence of this man, treating him apparently as a figment of the
disordered brain, or as an optical illusion.

"I’ve nothing to say," said Mr. Slosson.

"Or to do?"

"Or to do."

"Well, Mr. Slosson," said Edward Henry, "your junior partner has already
outlined your policy of masterly inactivity.  So I may as well go.  I
did say I’d go to my solicitors; but it’s occurred to me that as I’m a
principal I may as well first of all see the principals on the other
side.  I only came here because it mentions in the option that the
matter is to be completed here; that’s all."

"You a principal!" exclaimed Mr. Slosson.  "It seems to me you’re a long
way removed from a principal.  The alleged option is given to a Miss
Rose Euclid."

"Excuse me--_the_ Miss Rose Euclid."

"Miss Rose Euclid.  She divides up her alleged interest into fractions
and sells them here and there, and you buy them up one after another."
Mr. Slosson laughed, not unamiably.  "You’re a principal about five
times removed."

"Well," said Edward Henry, "whatever I am, I have a sort of idea I’ll go
and see this Mr. Gristle or Wrissell.  Can you--"

The man at the distant desk turned his head. Mr. Slosson coughed.  The
man rose.

"This is Mr. Wrissell," said Mr. Slosson with a gesture from which
confusion was not absent.

"Good morning," said the advancing Mr. Rollo Wrissell, and he said it
with an accent more Kensingtonian than any accent that Edward Henry had
ever heard.  His lounging and yet elegant walk assorted well with the
accent.  His black clothes were loose and untidy.  Such boots as his
could not have been worn by Edward Henry even in the Five Towns without
blushing shame, and his necktie looked as if a baby or a puppy had been
playing with it. Nevertheless, these shortcomings made absolutely no
difference whatever to the impressiveness of Mr. Rollo Wrissell, who was
famous for having said once: "I put on whatever comes to hand first, and
people don’t seem to mind."

Mr. Rollo Wrissell belonged to one of the seven great families which
once governed--and, by the way, still do govern--England, Scotland, and
Ireland.  The members of these families may be divided into two species:
those who rule, and those who are too lofty in spirit even to
rule--those who exist.  Mr. Rollo Wrissell belonged to the latter
species.  His nose and mouth had the exquisite refinement of the
descendant of generations of art-collectors and poet-patronisers.  He
enjoyed life, but not with rude activity, like the grosser members of
the ruling caste, rather with a certain rare languor.  He sniffed and
savoured the whole spherical surface of the apple of life with those
delicate nostrils rather than bit into it.  His one conviction was that
in a properly managed world nothing ought to occur to disturb or agitate
the perfect tranquillity of his existing.  And this conviction was so
profound, so visible even in his lightest gesture and glance, that it
exerted a mystic influence over the entire social organism, with the
result that practically nothing ever did occur to disturb or agitate the
perfect tranquillity of Mr. Rollo Wrissell’s existing. For Mr. Rollo
Wrissell the world was indeed almost ideal.

Edward Henry breathed to himself:

"This is the genuine article."

And, being an Englishman, he was far more impressed by Mr. Wrissell than
he had been by the much vaster reputations of Rose Euclid, Seven Sachs,
Mr. Slosson, senior.  At the same time he inwardly fought against Mr.
Wrissell’s silent and unconscious dominion over him, and all the defiant
Midland belief that one body is as good as anybody else surged up in
him--but stopped at his lips.

"Please don’t rise," Mr. Wrissell entreated, waving both hands.  "I’m
very sorry to hear of this unhappy complication," he went on to Edward
Henry with the most adorable and winning politeness.  "It pains me."
(His martyred expression said: "And really I ought not to be pained.")
"I’m quite convinced that you are here in absolute good faith--the most
absolute good faith, Mr.--"

"Machin," suggested Mr. Slosson.

"Ah!  Pardon me, Mr. Machin.  And, naturally, in the management of
enormous estates such as Lord Woldo’s little difficulties are apt to
occur.... I’m sorry you’ve been put in a false position. You have all my
sympathies.  But of course you understand that in this particular
case....  I myself have taken up the lease from the estate.  I happen to
be interested in a great movement.  The plans of my church have been
passed by the county council.  Building operations have indeed begun."

"Oh, chuck it!" said Edward Henry inexcusably--but such were his words.
A surfeit of Mr. Wrissell’s calm egotism and accent and fatigued
harmonious gestures drove him to commit this outrage upon the very
fabric of civilisation.

Mr. Wrissell, if he had ever met with the phrase,--which is
doubtful,--had certainly never heard it addressed to himself;
conceivably he might have once come across it in turning over the pages
of a slang dictionary.  A tragic expression traversed his bewildered
features; and then he recovered himself somewhat.

"I--"

"Go and bury yourself!" said Edward Henry, with increased savagery.

Mr. Wrissell, having comprehended, went.  He really did go.  He could
not tolerate scenes, and his glance showed that any forcible derangement
of his habit of existing smoothly would nakedly disclose the unyielding
adamantine selfishness that was the basis of the Wrissell philosophy.
His glance was at least harsh and bitter.  He went in silence, and
rapidly.  Mr. Slosson, senior, followed him at a great pace.

Edward Henry was angry.  Strange though it may seem, the chief cause of
his anger was the fact that his own manners and breeding were lower,
coarser, clumsier, more brutal, than Mr. Wrissell’s.

After what appeared to be a considerable absence Mr. Slosson, senior,
returned into the room.  Edward Henry, steeped in peculiar meditations,
was repeating:

"So this is Slosson’s!"

"What’s that?" demanded Mr. Slosson with a challenge in his ancient but
powerful voice.

"Nowt!" said Edward Henry.

"Now, sir," said Mr. Slosson, "we’d better come to an understanding
about this so-called option.  It’s not serious, you know."

"You’ll find it is."

"It’s not commercial."

"I fancy it is--for me!" said Edward Henry.

"The premium mentioned is absurdly inadequate, and the ground-rent is
quite improperly low."

"That’s just why I look on it as commercial--from my point of view,"
said Edward Henry.

"It isn’t worth the paper it’s written on," said Mr. Slosson.

"Why?"

"Because, seeing the unusual form of it, it ought to be stamped, and it
isn’t stamped."

"Listen here, Mr. Slosson," said Edward Henry, "I want you to remember
that you’re talking to a lawyer."

"A lawyer?"

"I was in the law for years," said Edward Henry. "And you know as well
as I do that I can get the option stamped at any time by paying a
penalty, which at worst will be a trifle compared to the value of the
option."

"Ah!"  Mr. Slosson paused, and resumed his puffing, which
exercise--perhaps owing to undue excitement--he had pretermitted.  "Then
further, the deed isn’t drawn up."

"That’s not my fault."

"Further, the option is not transferable."

"We shall see about that."

"And the money ought to be paid down to-day, even on your own
showing--every cent of it, in cash."

"Here is the money," said Edward Henry, drawing his pocketbook from his
breast.  "Every cent of it, in the finest brand of bank-notes!"

He flung down the notes with the impulsive gesture of an artist; then,
with the caution of a man of the world, gathered them in again.

"The whole circumstances under which the alleged option is alleged to
have been given would have to be examined," said Mr. Slosson.

"_I_ sha’n’t mind," said Edward Henry; "others might."

"There is such a thing as undue influence."

"Miss Euclid is fifty if she’s a day," replied Edward Henry.

"I don’t see what Miss Euclid’s age has to do with the matter."

"Then your eyesight must be defective, Mr. Slosson."

"The document might be a forgery."

"It might.  But I’ve got an autograph letter written entirely in the
last Lord Woldo’s hand, enclosing the option."

"Let me see it, please."

"Certainly, but in a court of law," said Edward Henry.  "You know you’re
hungry for a good action, followed by a bill of costs as long as from
here to Jericho."

"Mr. Wrissell will assuredly fight," said Mr. Slosson.  "He has already
given me the most explicit instructions.  Mr. Wrissell’s objection to a
certain class of theatres is well-known."

"And does Mr. Wrissell settle everything?"

"Mr. Wrissell and Lady Woldo settle everything between them, and Lady
Woldo is guided by Mr. Wrissell.  There is an impression abroad that
because Lady Woldo was originally connected--er--with the stage, she and
Mr. Wrissell are not entirely at one in the conduct of her and her son’s
interests.  Nothing could be further from the fact."

Edward Henry’s thoughts dwelt for a few moments upon the late Lord
Woldo’s picturesque and far-resounding marriage.

"Can you give me Lady Woldo’s address?"

"I can’t," said Mr. Slosson after an instant’s hesitation.

"You mean you won’t!"

Mr. Slosson pursed his lips.

"Well, you can do the other thing!" said Edward Henry, insolent to the
last.

As he left the premises he found Mr. Rollo Wrissell and his own new
acquaintance, Mr. Alloyd, the architect, chatting in the portico.  Mr.
Wrissell was calm, bland, and attentive; Mr. Alloyd was eager, excited,
and deferential.

Edward Henry caught the words "Russian ballet."  He reflected upon an
abstract question oddly disconnected with the violent welter of his
sensations: "Can a man be a good practical architect who isn’t able to
sleep because he’s seen a Russian ballet?"

The alert chauffeur of the electric brougham, who had an excellent idea
of effect, brought the admirable vehicle to the curb exactly in front of
Edward Henry as Edward Henry reached the edge of the pavement.
Ejaculating a brief command, Edward Henry disappeared within the
vehicle, and was whirled away in a style whose perfection no scion of a
governing family could have bettered.



                                  IV.


The next scene in the exciting drama of Edward Henry’s existence that
day took place in a building as huge as Wilkins’s itself.  As the
brougham halted at its portals an old and medalled man rushed forth,
touched his cap, and assisted Edward Henry to alight.  Within the
groined and echoing hall of the establishment a young boy sprang out
and, with every circumstance of deference, took Edward Henry’s hat and
stick.  Edward Henry then walked a few steps to a lift, and said
"Smoking-room!" to another menial, who bowed humbly before him, and at
the proper moment bowed him out of the lift. Edward Henry, crossing a
marble floor, next entered an enormous marble apartment chiefly
populated by easy chairs and tables.  He sat down to a table, and
fiercely rang a bell which reposed thereon.  Several other menials
simultaneously appeared out of invisibility, and one of them hurried
obsequiously towards him.

"Bring me a glass of water and a peerage," said Edward Henry.

"I beg pardon, sir.  A glass of water and--"

"A peerage.  P double e-r-a-g-e."

"I beg your pardon, sir.  I didn’t catch.  Which peerage, sir?  We have
several."

"All of them."

In a hundred seconds, the last menial having thanked him for kindly
taking the glass and the pile of books, Edward Henry was sipping water
and studying peerages.  In two hundred seconds he was off again.  A
menial opened the swing-doors of the smoking-room for him, and bowed.
The menial of the lift bowed, wafted him downwards, and bowed.  The
infant menial produced his hat and stick and bowed.  The old and
medalled menial summoned his brougham with a frown at the chauffeur and
a smile at Edward Henry, bowed, opened the door of the brougham, helped
Edward Henry in, bowed, and shut the door.

"Where to, sir?"

"262 Eaton Square," said Edward Henry.

"Thank you, sir," said the aged menial, and repeated in a curt and
peremptory voice to the chauffeur, "262 Eaton Square!"  Lastly he
touched his cap.

And Edward Henry swiftly left the precincts of the headquarters of
political democracy in London.



                                   V.


As he came within striking distance of 262 Eaton Square he had the
advantage of an unusual and brilliant spectacle.

Lord Woldo was one of the richest human beings in England--and
incidentally he was very human. If he had been in a position to realise
all his assets and go to America with the ready money, his wealth was
such that even amid the luxurious society of Pittsburg he could have cut
quite a figure for some time.  He owned a great deal of the land between
Oxford Street and Regent Street, and again a number of the valuable
squares north of Oxford Street were his, and as for Edgware Road--just
as auctioneers advertise a couple of miles of trout-stream or
salmon-river as a pleasing adjunct to a country estate, so, had Lord
Woldo’s estate come under the hammer, a couple of miles of Edgware Road
might have been advertised as among its charms.  Lord Woldo owned four
theatres, and to each theatre he had his private entrance, and in each
theatre his private box, over which the management had no sway.  The
Woldos in their leases had always insisted on this.

He never built in London; his business was to let land for others to
build upon, the condition being that what others built should ultimately
belong to him.  Thousands of people in London were only too delighted to
build on these terms: he could pick and choose his builders.  (The
astute Edward Henry himself, for example, wanted furiously to build for
him, and was angry because obstacles stood in the path of his desire.)
It was constantly happening that under legal agreements some fine
erection put up by another hand came into the absolute possession of
Lord Woldo without one halfpenny of expense to Lord Woldo.  Now and then
a whole street would thus tumble all complete into his hands. The
system, most agreeable for Lord Woldo and about a dozen other landlords
in London, was called the leasehold system; and when Lord Woldo became
the proprietor of some bricks and mortar that had cost him nothing, it
was said that one of Lord Woldo’s leases had "fallen in," and everybody
was quite satisfied by this phrase.

In the provinces, besides castles, forests, and moors, Lord Woldo owned
many acres of land under which was coal, and he allowed enterprising
persons to dig deep for this coal, and often explode themselves to death
in the adventure, on the understanding that they paid him sixpence for
every ton of coal brought to the surface, whether they made any profit
on it or not.  This arrangement was called "mining rights"--another
phrase that apparently satisfied everybody.

It might be thought that Lord Woldo was, as they say, on velvet.  But
the velvet, if it could be so described, was not of so rich and
comfortable a pile after all; for Lord Woldo’s situation involved many
and heavy responsibilities, and was surrounded by grave dangers.  He was
the representative of an old order going down in the unforeseeable
welter of twentieth-century politics.  Numbers of thoughtful students of
English conditions spent much of their time in wondering what would
happen one day to the Lord Woldos of England.  And when a really great
strike came, and a dozen ex-artisans met in a private room of a West End
hotel and decided, without consulting Lord Woldo, or the Prime Minister,
or anybody, that the commerce of the country should be brought to a
standstill, these thoughtful students perceived that even Lord Woldo’s
situation was no more secure than other people’s; in fact, that it was
rather less so.

There could be no doubt that the circumstances of Lord Woldo furnished
him with food for thought, and very indigestible food too....  Why, at
least one hundred sprightly female creatures were being brought up in
the hope of marrying him.  And they would all besiege him, and he could
only marry one of them--at once!

Now, as Edward Henry stopped as near to No. 262 as the presence of a
waiting two-horse carriage permitted, he saw a gray-haired and
blue-cloaked woman solemnly descending the steps of the portico of No.
262.  She was followed by another similar woman, and watched by a butler
and a footman at the summit of the steps, and by a footman on the
pavement, and by the coachman on the box of the carriage.  She carried a
thick and lovely white shawl, and in this shawl was Lord Woldo and all
his many and heavy responsibilities.  It was his fancy to take the air
thus, in the arms of a woman. He allowed himself to be lifted into the
open carriage, and the door of the carriage was shut; and off went the
two ancient horses, slowly, and the two adult fat men and the two mature
spinsters, and the vehicle weighing about a ton; and Lord Woldo’s
morning promenade had begun.

"Follow that!" said Edward Henry to the chauffeur, and nipped into his
brougham again. Nobody had told him that the being in the shawl was Lord
Woldo, but he was sure that it must be so.

In twenty minutes he saw Lord Woldo being carried to and fro amid the
groves of Hyde Park (one of the few bits of London earth that did not
belong to him nor to his more or less distant connections) while the
carriage waited.  Once Lord Woldo sat on a chair, but the chief nurse’s
lap was between him and the chair-seat.  Both nurses chattered to him in
Kensingtonian accents, but he offered no replies.

"Go back to 262," said Edward Henry to his chauffeur.

Arrived again in Eaton Square, he did not give himself time to be
imposed upon by the grandiosity of the square in general nor of No. 262
in particular. He just ran up the steps and rang the visitors’ bell.

"After all," he said to himself as he waited, "these houses aren’t even
semi detached!  They’re just houses in a row, and I bet every one of ’em
can hear the piano next door!"

The butler whom he had previously caught sight of opened the great
portal.

"I want to see Lady Woldo."

"Her ladyship--" began the formidable official.

"Now look here my man," said Edward Henry rather in desperation, "I must
see Lady Woldo instantly.  It’s about the baby--"

"About his lordship?"

"Yes.  And look lively, please."

He stepped into the sombre and sumptuous hall.

"Well," he reflected, "I am going it--no mistake!"



                                  VI.


He was in a large back drawing-room, of which the window, looking north,
was in rich stained glass. "No doubt because they’re ashamed of the
view," he said to himself.  The size of the chimneypiece impressed him,
and also its rich carving.  "But what an old-fashioned grate!" he said
to himself. "They need gilt radiators here."  The doorway was a marvel
of ornate sculpture, and he liked it. He liked too the effect of the
oil-paintings--mainly portraits--on the walls, and the immensity of the
brass fender, and the rugs, and the leatherwork of the chairs.  But
there could be no question that the room was too dark for the taste of
any householder clever enough to know the difference between a house and
a church.

There was a plunging noise at the door behind him.

"What’s amiss?" he heard a woman’s voice. And as he heard it he thrilled
with sympathetic vibrations.  It was not a North Staffordshire voice,
but it was a South Yorkshire voice, which is almost the same thing.  It
seemed to him to be the first un-Kensingtonian voice to soothe his ears
since he had left the Five Towns.  Moreover, nobody born south of the
Trent would have said, "What’s amiss?"  A Southerner would have said,
"What’s the matter?"  Or, more probably, "What’s the mattah?"

He turned and saw a breathless and very beautiful woman of about
twenty-nine or thirty, clothed in black, and she was in the act of
removing from her lovely head what looked like a length of red flannel.
He noticed too, simultaneously, that she was suffering from a heavy
cold.  A majestic footman behind her closed the door and disappeared.

"Are you Lady Woldo?" Edward Henry asked.

"Yes," she said.  "What’s this about my baby?"

"I’ve just seen him in Hyde Park," said Edward Henry.  "And I observed
that a rash had broken out all over his face."

"I know that," she replied.  "It began this morning, all of a sudden
like.  But what of it?  I was rather alarmed myself, as it’s the first
rash he’s had, and he’s the first baby I’ve had--and he’ll be the last
too.  But everybody said it was nothing. He’s never been out without me
before, but I had such a cold.  Now, you don’t mean to tell me that
you’ve come down specially from Hyde Park to inform me about that rash.
I’m not such a simpleton as all that."  She spoke in one long breath.

"I’m sure you’re not," said he.  "But we’ve had a good deal of rash in
our family, and it just happens that I’ve got a remedy--a good, sound,
north-country remedy, and it struck me you might like to know of it.
So, if you like, I’ll telegraph to my missis for the recipe.  Here’s my
card."

She read his name, title, and address.

"Well," she said, "it’s very kind of you, I’m sure, Mr. Machin.  I knew
you must come from up there the moment ye spoke.  It does one good above
a bit to hear a plain north-country voice after all this fal-lalling."

She blew her lovely nose.

"Doesn’t it!" Edward Henry agreed.  "That was just what I thought when I
heard you say ’Bless us!’  Do you know, I’ve been in London only a
two-three days, and I assure you I was beginning to feel lonely for a
bit of the Midland accent!"

"Yes," she said, "London’s lonely!" and sighed.

"My eldest was bitten by a dog the other day," he went on in the vein of
gossip.

"Oh, don’t!" she protested.

"Yes.  Gave us a lot of anxiety.  All right now! You might like to know
that cyanide gauze is a good thing to put on a wound--supposing anything
should happen to yours--"

"Oh, don’t!" she protested.  "I do hope and pray Robert will never be
bitten by a dog.  Was it a big dog?"

"Fair," said Edward Henry.  "So his name’s Robert!  So’s my eldest’s!"

"Really now!  They wanted him to be called Robert Philip Stephen Darrand
Patrick.  But I wouldn’t have it.  He’s just Robert.  I did have my own
way _there_!  You know he was born six months after his father’s death."

"And I suppose he’s ten months now?"

"No; only six."

"Great Scott!  He’s big!" said Edward Henry.

"Well," said she, "he is.  I am, you see."

"Now, Lady Woldo," said Edward Henry in a new tone, "as we’re both from
the same part of the country, I want to be perfectly straight and above
board with you.  It’s quite true--all that about the rash.  And I _did_
think you’d like to know.  But that’s not really what I came to see you
about.  You understand, not knowing you, I fancied there might be some
difficulty in getting at you--"

"Oh, no!" she said simply.  "Everybody gets at me."

"Well, I didn’t know, you see.  So I just mentioned the baby to begin
with, like!"

"I hope you’re not after money," she said almost plaintively.

"I’m not," he said.  "You can ask anybody in Bursley or Hanbridge
whether I’m the sort of man to go out on the cadge."

"I once was in the chorus in a panto at Hanbridge," she said.  "Don’t
they call Bursley ’Bosley’ down there--’owd Bosley’?"

Edward Henry dealt suitably with these remarks, and then gave her a
judicious version of the nature of his business, referring several time
to Mr. Rollo Wrissell.

"Mr. Wrissell!" she murmured, smiling.

"In the end I told Mr. Wrissell to go and bury himself," said Edward
Henry.  "And that’s about as far as I’ve got."

"Oh, don’t!" she said, her voice weak from suppressed laughter, and then
the laughter burst forth uncontrollable.

"Yes," he said, delighted with himself and her, "I told him to go and
bury himself!"

"I suppose you don’t like Mr. Wrissell?"

"Well--" he temporised.

"I didn’t at first," she said.  "I hated him.  But I like him now,
though I must say I adore teasing him.  Mr. Wrissell is what I call a
gentleman. You know he was Lord Woldo’s heir.  And when Lord Woldo
married me it was a bit of a blow for him!  But he took it like a lamb.
He never turned a hair, and he was more polite than any of them. I dare
say you know Lord Woldo saw me in a musical comedy at Scarborough--he
has a place near there, ye know.  Mr. Wrissell had made him angry about
some of his New Thought fads, and I do believe he asked me to marry him
just to annoy Mr. Wrissell.  He used to say to me, my husband did, that
he’d married me in too much of a hurry, and that it was too bad on Mr.
Wrissell.  And then he laughed, and I laughed too.  ’After all,’ he used
to say, my husband did, ’to marry an actress is an accident that might
happen to any member of the House of Lords; and it does happen to a lot
of ’em, but they don’t marry anything as beautiful as you, Blanche,’ he
used to say.  ’And you stick up for yourself, Blanche,’ he used to say.
’I’ll stand by you,’ he said.  He was a straight ’un, my husband was.

"They left me alone until he died.  And then they began--I mean _his_
folks.  And when Bobby was born it got worse.  Only I must say even then
Mr. Wrissell never turned a hair.  Everybody seemed to make out that I
ought to be very grateful to him, and I ought to think myself very
lucky. Me--a peeress of the realm!  They wanted me to change.  But how
could I change?  I was Blanche Wilmot, on the road for ten years,--never
got a show in London,--and Blanche Wilmot I shall ever be, peeress or no
peeress!  It was no joke being Lord Woldo’s wife, I can tell you; and
it’s still less of a joke being Lord Woldo’s mother.  You imagine it.
It’s worse than carrying about a china vase all the time on a slippery
floor.  Am I any happier now than I was before I married?  Well, I _am_!
There’s more worry in one way, but there’s less in another.  And of
course I’ve got Bobby!  But it isn’t all beer and skittles, and I let
’em know it, too. I can’t do what I like.  And I’m just a sort of exile,
you know.  I used to enjoy being on the stage, and showing myself off.
A hard life, but one does enjoy it.  And one gets used to it.  One gets
to need it. Sometimes I feel I’d give anything to be able to go on the
stage again--oh--oh--!"

She sneezed; then took breath.

"Shall I put some more coal on the fire?" Edward Henry suggested.

"Perhaps I’d better ring," she hesitated.

"No, I’ll do it."

He put coal on the fire.

"And if you’d feel easier with that flannel round your head, please do
put it on again."

"Well," she said, "I will.  My mother used to say there was naught like
red flannel for a cold."

With an actress’ skill she arranged the flannel, and from its encircling
folds her face emerged bewitching--and she knew it.  Her complexion had
suffered in ten years of the road, but its extreme beauty could not yet
be denied.  And Edward Henry thought: "All the _really_ pretty girls
come from the Midlands!"

"Here I am rambling on," she said.  "I always was a rare rambler.  What
do you want me to do?"

"Exert your influence," he replied.  "Don’t you think it’s rather hard
on Rose Euclid--treating her like this?  Of course people say all sorts
of things about Rose Euclid--"

"I won’t hear a word against Rose Euclid," cried Lady Woldo.  "Whenever
she was on tour, if she knew any of us were resting in the town where
she was, she’d send us seats.  And many’s the time I’ve cried and cried
at her acting.  And then she’s the life and soul of the Theatrical
Ladies’ Guild."

"And isn’t that your husband’s signature?" he demanded, showing the
precious option.

"Of course it is."

He did not show her the covering letter.

"And I’ve no doubt my husband _wanted_ a theatre built there, and he
wanted to do Rose Euclid a good turn.  And I’m quite positive certain
sure that he didn’t want any of Mr. Wrissell’s rigmaroles on his land.
He wasn’t that sort, my husband wasn’t....  You must go to law about
it," she finished.

"Yes," said Edward Henry protestingly.  "And a pretty penny it would
cost me!  And supposing I lost, after all? ... You never know.  There’s
a much easier way than going to law."

"What is it?"

"As I say, you exert your influence, Lady Woldo. Write and tell them
I’ve seen you and you insist--"

"Eh!  Bless you!  They’d twist me round their little finger.  I’m not a
fool, but I’m not very clever; I know that.  I shouldn’t know whether I
was standing on my head or my heels by the time they’d done with me.
I’ve tried to face them out before--about things."

"Who, Mr. Wrissell or Slossons?"

"Both!  Eh, but I should like to put a spoke in Mr. Wrissell’s wheel,
gentleman as he is.  You see, he’s just one of those men you can’t help
wanting to tease.  When you’re on the road you meet lots of ’em."

"I tell you what you can do!"

"What?"

"Write and tell Slossons that you don’t wish them to act for you any
more, and you’ll go to another firm of solicitors.  That would bring ’em
to their senses."

"Can’t!  They’re in the will.  _He_ settled that. That’s why they’re so
cocky."

Edward Henry persisted, and this time with an exceedingly impressive and
conspiratorial air:

"I tell you another thing you could do--you really _could_ do--and it
depends on nobody but yourself."

"Well," she said with decision, "I’ll do it."

"Whatever it is?"

"If it’s straight."

"Of course it’s straight.  And it would be a grand way of teasing Mr.
Wrissell and all of ’em!  A simply grand way!  I should die of
laughing."

"Well--"

At this critical point the historic conversation was interrupted by
phenomena in the hall which Lady Woldo recognised with feverish
excitement.  Lord Woldo had safely returned from Hyde Park. Starting up,
she invited Edward Henry to wait a little.  A few moments later they
were bending over the infant together, and Edward Henry was offering his
views on the cause and cure of rash.



                                  VII.


Early on the same afternoon Edward Henry managed by a somewhat excessive
obstreperousness to penetrate once more into the private room of Mr.
Slosson, senior, who received him in silence.

He passed a document to Mr. Slosson.

"It’s only a copy," he said, "but the original is in my pocket, and
to-morrow it will be duly stamped. I’ll give you the original in
exchange for the stamped lease of my Piccadilly Circus plot of land. You
know the money is waiting."

Mr. Slosson perused the document; and it was certainly to his credit
that he did so without any superficial symptoms of dismay.

"What will Mr. Wrissell and the Woldo family say about that, do you
think?" asked Edward Henry.

"Lady Woldo will never be allowed to carry it out," said Mr. Slosson.

"Who’s going to stop her?  She must carry it out.  She wants to carry it
out.  She’s dying to carry it out.  Moreover, I shall communicate it to
the papers to-night--unless you and I come to an arrangement.  And if by
any chance she doesn’t carry it out--well, there’ll be a fine society
action about it, you can bet your boots, Mr. Slosson."

The document was a contract made between Blanche Lady Woldo of the one
part and Edward Henry Machin of the other part, whereby Blanche Lady
Woldo undertook to appear in musical comedy at any West End theatre to
be named by Edward Henry, at a salary of two hundred pounds a week, for
the period of six months.

"You’ve not got a theatre," said Mr. Slosson.

"I can get half a dozen in an hour--with that contract in my hand," said
Edward Henry.

And he knew from Mr. Slosson’s face that he had won.



                                 VIII.


That evening, feeling that he had earned a little recreation, he went to
the Empire Theatre--not in Hanbridge, but in Leicester Square, London.
The lease, with a prodigious speed hitherto unknown at Slossons, had
been drawn up, engrossed, and executed.  The Piccadilly Circus land was
his for sixty-four years.

"And I’ve got the old chapel pulled down for nothing," he said to
himself.

He was rather happy as he wandered about amid the brilliance of the
Empire Promenade.  But after half an hour of such exercise, and of vain
efforts to see or hear what was afoot on the stage, he began to feel
rather lonely.  Then it was that he caught sight of Mr. Alloyd the
architect, also lonely.

"Well," said Mr. Alloyd curtly, with a sardonic smile, "they’ve
telephoned me all about it.  I’ve seen Mr. Wrissell.  Just my luck!  So
you’re the man!  He pointed you out to me this morning. My design for
that church would have knocked the West End!  Of course Mr. Wrissell
will pay me compensation, but that’s not the same thing.  I wanted the
advertisement of the building....  Just my luck!  Have a drink, will
you?"

Edward Henry ultimately went with the plaintive Mr. Alloyd to his rooms
in Adelphi Terrace.  He quitted those rooms at something after two
o’clock in the morning.  He had practically given Mr. Alloyd a definite
commission to design the Regent Theatre.  Already he was practically the
proprietor of a first-class theatre in the West End of London!

"I wonder whether Master Seven Sachs could have bettered my day’s work
to-day!" he reflected as he got into a taxicab.  He had dismissed his
electric brougham earlier in the evening.  "I doubt if even Master Seven
Sachs himself wouldn’t be proud of my little scheme in Eaton Square!"
said he....  "Wilkins’s Hotel, please, driver."




                              THE OLD ADAM

                                PART II



                              CHAPTER VII

                              CORNER-STONE

                                   I.

On a morning in spring Edward Henry got out of an express at Euston,
which had come, not from the Five Towns, but from Birmingham.  Having on
the previous day been called to Birmingham on local and profitable
business, he had found it convenient to spend the night there and
telegraph home that London had summoned him.  It was in this
unostentatious, this half-furtive fashion, that his visits to London now
usually occurred.  Not that he was afraid of his wife! Not that he was
afraid even of his mother!  Oh, no!  He was merely rather afraid of
himself,--of his own opinion concerning the metropolitan, non-local,
speculative, and perhaps unprofitable business to which he was
committed.  The fact was that he could scarcely look his women in the
face when he mentioned London.  He spoke vaguely of "real estate"
enterprise, and left it at that.  The women made no enquiries; they too,
left it at that. Nevertheless....

The episode of Wilkins’s was buried, but it was imperfectly buried.  The
Five Towns definitely knew that he had stayed at Wilklns’s for a bet,
and that Brindley had discharged the bet.  And rumours of his valet, his
electric brougham, his theatrical supper-parties, had mysteriously hung
in the streets of the Five Towns like a strange vapour.  Wisps of the
strange vapour had conceivably entered the precincts of his home, but
nobody ever referred to them; nobody ever sniffed apprehensively, nor
asked anybody else whether there was not a smell of fire. The
discreetness of the silence was disconcerting. Happily his relations
with that angel, his wife, were excellent.  She had carried angelicism
so far as not to insist on the destruction of Carlo; and she had
actually applauded, while sticking to her white apron, the sudden and
startling extravagances of his toilette.

On the whole, though little short of thirty-five thousand pounds would
ultimately be involved,--not to speak of liability of nearly three
thousand a year for sixty-four years for ground-rent,--Edward Henry was
not entirely gloomy as to his prospects. He was indubitably thinner in
girth; novel problems and anxieties, and the constant annoyance of being
in complete technical ignorance of his job, had removed some flesh.
(And not a bad thing either!)  But, on the other hand, his chin
exhibited one proof that life was worth living, and that he had
discovered new faith in life and a new conviction of youthfulness.

He had shaved off his beard.

"Well, sir!" a voice greeted him full of hope and cheer, immediately his
feet touched the platform.

It was the voice of Mr. Marrier.  Edward Henry and Mr. Marrier were now
in regular relations.  Before Edward Henry had paid his final bill at
Wilkins’s and relinquished his valet and his electric brougham, and
disposed forever of his mythical "man" on board the _Minnetonka_, and
got his original luggage away from the Hotel Majestic, Mr. Marrier had
visited him and made a certain proposition.  And such was the influence
of Mr. Marrier’s incurable smile, and of his solid optimism, and of his
obvious talent for getting things done on the spot (as witness the
photography), that the proposition had been accepted.  Mr. Marrier was
now Edward Henry’s "representative" in London. At the Green Room Club
Mr. Marrier informed reliable cronies that he was Edward Henry’s
"confidential adviser."  At the Turk’s Head, Hanbridge, Edward Henry
informed reliable cronies that Mr. Marrier was a sort of clerk,
factotum, or maid of all work.  A compromise between these two very
different conceptions of Mr. Marrier’s position had been arrived at in
the word "representative."  The real truth was that Edward Henry
employed Mr. Marrier in order to listen to Mr. Marrier. He turned to Mr.
Marrier like a tap, and nourished himself from a gushing stream of
useful information concerning the theatrical world.  Mr. Marrier, quite
unconsciously, was bit by bit remedying Edward Henry’s acute ignorance.

The question of wages had caused Edward Henry some apprehension.  He had
learnt in a couple of days that a hundred pounds a week was a trifle on
the stage.  He had soon heard of performers who worked for "nominal"
salaries of forty and fifty a week.  For a manager twenty pounds a week
seemed to be a usual figure.  But in the Five Towns three pounds a week
is regarded as very goodish pay for any subordinate, and Edward Henry
could not rid himself all at once of native standards.  He had
therefore, with diffidence, offered three pounds a week to the
aristocratic Marrier.  And Mr. Marrier had not refused it, nor ceased to
smile.  On three pounds a week he haunted the best restaurants,
taxicabs, and other resorts, and his garb seemed always to be smarter
than Edward Henry’s, especially in such details as waistcoat slips.

Of course Mr. Marrier had a taxicab waiting exactly opposite the coach
from which Edward Henry descended.  It was just this kind of efficient
attention that was gradually endearing him to his employer.

"How goes it?" said Edward Henry curtly, as they drove down to the Grand
Babylon Hotel, now Edward Henry’s regular headquarters in London.

Said Mr. Marrier:

"I suppose you’ve seen another of ’em’s got a knighthood?"

"No," said Edward Henry.  "Who?"  He knew that by "’em" Mr. Marrier
meant the great race of actor-managers.

"Gerald Pompey.  Something to do with him being a sheriff in the City,
you know.  I bet you what you laike he went in for the Common Council
simply in order to get even with old Pilgrim.  In fact, I know he did.
And now a foundation-stone-laying has dan it!"

"A foundation-stone-laying?"

"Yes.  The new City Guild’s building, you knaow. Royalty--Temple Bar
business--sheriffs--knighthood. There you are!"

"Oh!" said Edward Henry.  And then after a pause added: "Pity _we_ can’t
have a foundation-stone-laying!"

"By the way, old Pilgrim’s in the deuce and all of a haole, I heah.
It’s all over the Clubs."  (In speaking of the Clubs, Mr. Marrier always
pronounced them with a Capital letter.)  "I told you he was going to
sail from Tilbury on his world-tour, and have a grand embarking ceremony
and seeing-off! Just laike him!  Greatest advertiser the world ever saw!
Well, since that P. and O. boat was lost on the Goodwins, Cora Pryde has
absolutely declined to sail from Tilbury.  Ab-so-lute-ly!  Swears she’ll
join the steamer at Marseilles.  And Pilgrim has got to go with her,
too."

"Why?"

"Well, even Pilgrim couldn’t have a grand embarking ceremony without his
leading lady!  He’s furious, I hear."

"Why shouldn’t he go with her?"

"Why not?  Because he’s formally announced his grand embarking ceremony!
Invitations are out. Barge from London Bridge to Tilbury, and so on!
What he wants is a good excuse for giving it up. He’d never be able to
admit that he’d had to give it up because Cora Pryde made him!  He wants
to save his face."

"Well," said Edward Henry absently, "it’s a queer world.  You’ve got me
a room at the Grand Bab?"

"Rather!"

"Then let’s go and have a look at the Regent first," said Edward Henry.

No sooner had he expressed the wish than Mr. Marrier’s neck curved round
through the window, and with three words to the chauffeur he had
deflected the course of the taxi.

Edward Henry had an almost boyish curiosity about his edifice.  He would
go and give it a glance at the oddest moments.  And just now he had a
swift and violent desire to behold it.  With all speed the taxi shot
down Shaftesbury Avenue and swerved to the right....

There it was!  Yes, it really existed, the incredible edifice of his
caprice and of Mr. Alloyd’s constructive imagination!  It had already
reached a height of fifteen feet; and, dozens of yards above that,
cranes dominated the sunlit air, swinging loads of bricks in the azure;
and scores of workmen crawled about beneath these monsters.  And he,
Edward Henry, by a single act of volition was the author of it!  He
slipped from the taxi, penetrated within the wall of hoardings, and
gazed, just gazed! A wondrous thing--human enterprise!  And also a
terrifying thing! ... That building might be the tomb of his reputation.
On the other hand it might be the seed of a new renown compared to which
the first would be as naught!  He turned his eyes away, in fear--yes, in
fear!

"I say," he said, "will Sir John Pilgrim be out of bed yet, d’ye think?"
He glanced at his watch. The hour was about eleven.

"He’ll be at breakfast."

"I’m going to see him, then.  What’s his address?"

"Twenty-five Queen Anne’s Gate.  But do you knaow him?  I do.  Shall I
cam with you?"

"No," said Edward Henry shortly.  "You go on with my bags to the Grand
Bab, and get me another taxi.  I’ll see you in my room at the hotel at a
quarter to one.  Eh?"

"Rather!" agreed Mr. Marrier, submissive.



                                  II.


"Sole proprietor of the Regent Theatre."

These were the words which Edward Henry wrote on a visiting-card, and
which procured him immediate admittance to the unique spectacle--reputed
to be one of the most enthralling sights in London--of Sir John Pilgrim
at breakfast.

In a very spacious front room of his flat (so celebrated for its
Gobelins tapestries and its truly wonderful parquet flooring) sat Sir
John Pilgrim at a large hexagonal mahogany table.  At one side of the
table a small square of white diaper was arranged, and on this square
were an apparatus for boiling eggs, another for making toast, and a
third for making coffee.  Sir John, with the assistance of a young
Chinaman and a fox-terrier who flitted around him, was indeed eating and
drinking.  The vast remainder of the table was gleamingly bare, save for
newspapers and letters, opened and unopened, which Sir John tossed
about.  Opposite to him sat a secretary whose fluffy hair, neat white
chemisette, and tender years gave her an appearance of helpless
fragility in front of the powerful and ruthless celebrity.  Sir John’s
crimson-socked left foot stuck out from the table, emerging from the
left half of a lovely new pair of brown trousers, and resting on a piece
of white paper.  Before this white paper knelt a man in a frock-coat,
who was drawing an outline on the paper round Sir John’s foot.

"You _are_ a bootmaker, aren’t you?" Sir John was saying airily.

"Yes, Sir John."

"Excuse me!" said Sir John.  "I only wanted to be sure.  I fancied from
the way you caressed my corn with that pencil that you might be an
artist on one of the illustrated papers.  My mistake!"  He was bending
down.  Then suddenly straightening himself he called across the room: "I
say, Givington, did you notice my pose then--my expression as I used the
word ’caressed’?  How would that do?"

And Edward Henry now observed in a corner of the room a man standing in
front of an easel and sketching somewhat grossly thereon in charcoal.
This man said:

"If you won’t bother me, Sir John, I won’t bother you."

"Ah!  Givington!  Ah!  Givington!" murmured Sir John still more
airily--at breakfast he was either airy or nothing.  "You’re getting on
in the world.  You aren’t merely an A.R.A.--you’re making money.  A year
ago you’d never have had the courage to address me in that tone.  Well,
I sincerely congratulate you....  Here, Snip, here’s my dentist’s
bill--worry it, worry it!  Good dog! Worry it!"

(The dog growled now over a torn document beneath the table.)

"Miss Taft, you might see that a _communiqué_ goes out to the effect
that I gave my first sitting to Mr. Saracen Givington, A.R.A., this
morning. The activities of Mr. Saracen Givington are of interest to the
world, and rightly so!  You’d better come round to the other side for
the right foot, Mr. Bootmaker.  The journey is simply nothing."

And then, and not till then, did Sir John Pilgrim turn his large and
handsome middle-aged blond face in the direction of Alderman Edward
Henry Machin.

"Pardon my curiosity," said Sir John, "but who are you?"

"My name is Machin--Alderman Machin," said Edward Henry.  "I sent up my
card and you asked me to come in."

"Ha!" Sir John exclaimed, seizing an egg. "Will you crack an egg with
me, Alderman?  I can crack an egg with anybody."

"Thanks," said Edward Henry.  "I’ll be very glad to."  And he advanced
towards the table.

Sir John hesitated.  The fact was that, though he dissembled his dismay
with marked histrionic skill, he was unquestionably overwhelmed by
astonishment.  In the course of years he had airily invited hundreds of
callers to crack an egg with him,--the joke was one of his
favourites,--but nobody had ever ventured to accept the invitation.

"Chung," he said weakly, "lay a cover for the alderman."

Edward Henry sat down quite close to Sir John. He could discern all the
details of Sir John’s face and costume.  The tremendous celebrity was
wearing a lounge suit somewhat like his own, but instead of the coat--he
had a blue dressing-jacket with crimson facings; the sleeves ended in
rather long wristbands, which were unfastened, the opal cuff-links
drooping each from a single hole.  Perhaps for the first time in his
life Edward Henry intimately understood what idiosyncratic elegance was.
He could almost feel the emanating personality of Sir John Pilgrim, and
he was intimidated by it; he was intimidated by its hardness, its
harshness, its terrific egotism, its utterly brazen quality.  Sir John’s
glance was the most purely arrogant that Edward Henry had ever
encountered.  It knew no reticence. And Edward Henry thought: "When this
chap dies he’ll want to die in public, with the reporters round his bed
and a private secretary taking down messages."

"This is rather a lark," said Sir John, recovering.

"It is," said Edward Henry, who now felicitously perceived that a lark
it indeed was, and ought to be treated as such.  "It shall be a lark!"
he said to himself.

Sir John dictated a letter to Miss Taft, and before the letter was
finished the grinning Chung had laid a place for Edward Henry, and Snip
had inspected him and passed him for one of the right sort.

"Had I said that this is rather a lark?" Sir John enquired, the letter
accomplished.

"I forget," said Edward Henry.

"Because I don’t like to say the same thing twice over if I can help it.
It is a lark though, isn’t it?"

"Undoubtedly," said Edward Henry, decapitating an egg.  "I only hope
that I’m not interrupting you."

"Not in the least," said Sir John.  "Breakfast is my sole free time.  In
another half-hour, I assure you, I shall be attending to three or four
things at once."  He leant over towards Edward Henry. "But between you
and me, Alderman, quite privately, if it isn’t a rude question, what did
you come for?"

"Well," said Edward Henry, "as I wrote on my card, I’m the sole
proprietor of the Regent Theatre--"

"But there is no Regent Theatre," Sir John interrupted him.

"No; not strictly.  But there will be.  It’s in course of construction.
We’re up to the first floor."

"Dear me!  A suburban theatre, no doubt?"

"Do you mean to say, Sir John," cried Edward Henry, "that you haven’t
noticed it.  It’s within a few yards of Piccadilly Circus."

"Really!" said Sir John.  "You see my theatre is in Lower Regent Street,
and I never go to Piccadilly Circus.  I make a point of not going to
Piccadilly Circus.  Miss Taft, how long is it since I went to Piccadilly
Circus?  Forgive me, young woman, I was forgetting--you aren’t old
enough to remember.  Well, never mind details....  And what is there
remarkable about the Regent Theatre, Alderman?"

"I intend it to be a theatre of the highest class, Sir John," said
Edward Henry.  "Nothing but the very best will be seen on its boards."

"That’s not remarkable, Alderman.  We’re all like that.  Haven’t you
noticed it?"

"Then, secondly," said Edward Henry, "I am the sole proprietor.  I have
no financial backers, no mortgages, no partners.  I have made no
contracts with anybody."

"That," said Sir John, "is not unremarkable. In fact, many persons who
do not happen to possess my own robust capacity for belief might not
credit your statement."

"And thirdly," said Edward Henry, "every member of the audience--even in
the boxes, the most expensive seats--will have a full view of the whole
of the stage--or, in the alternative, at matinées, a full view of a
lady’s hat."

"Alderman," said Sir John gravely, "before I offer you another egg, let
me warn you against carrying remarkableness too far.  You may be
regarded as eccentric if you go on like that.  Some people, I am told,
don’t want a view of the stage."

"Then they had better not come to my theatre," said Edward Henry.

"All which," commented Sir John, "gives me no clue whatever to the
reason why you are sitting here by my side and calmly eating my eggs and
toast and drinking my coffee."

Admittedly, Edward Henry was nervous.  Admittedly, he was a provincial
in the presence of one of the most illustrious personages of the empire.
Nevertheless he controlled his nervousness, and reflected:

"Nobody else from the Five Towns would or could have done what I am
doing.  Moreover, this chap is a mountebank.  In the Five Towns they
would kowtow to him, but they would laugh at him. They would mighty soon
add _him_ up.  Why should I be nervous?  I’m as good as he is."  He
finished with the thought which has inspired many a timid man with new
courage in a desperate crisis: "The fellow can’t eat me."

Then he said aloud:

"I want to ask you a question, Sir John."

"One?"

"One.  Are you the head of the theatrical profession, or is Sir Gerald
Pompey?"

"_Sir_ Gerald Pompey?"

"_Sir_ Gerald Pompey.  Haven’t you seen the papers this morning?"

Sir John Pilgrim turned pale.  Springing up, he seized the topmost of an
undisturbed pile of daily papers and feverishly opened it.

"Bah!" he muttered.

He was continually thus imitating his own behaviour on the stage.  The
origin of his renowned breakfasts lay in the fact that he had once
played the part of a millionaire ambassador who juggled at breakfast
with his own affairs and the affairs of the world.  The stage breakfast
of a millionaire ambassador created by a playwright on the verge of
bankruptcy had appealed to his imagination and influenced all the
mornings of his life.

"They’ve done it just to irritate me as I’m starting off on my world’s
tour," he muttered, coursing round the table.  Then he stopped and gazed
at Edward Henry.  "This is a political knighthood," said he.  "It has
nothing to do with the stage. It is not like my knighthood, is it?"

"Certainly not," Edward Henry agreed.  "But you know how people will
talk, Sir John.  People will be going about this very morning and saying
that Sir Gerald is at last the head of the theatrical profession.  I
came here for your authoritative opinion.  I know you’re unbiased."

Sir John resumed his chair.

"As for Pompey’s qualifications as a head," he murmured, "I know nothing
of them.  I fancy his heart is excellent.  I only saw him twice, once in
his own theatre, and once in Bond Street.  I should be inclined to say
that on the stage he looks more like a gentleman than any gentleman
ought to look, and that in the street he might be mistaken for an
actor....  How will that suit you?"

"It’s a clue," said Edward Henry.

"Alderman," exclaimed Sir John, "I believe that if I didn’t keep a firm
hand on myself I should soon begin to like you!  Have another cup of
coffee. Chung! ... Good-bye, Bootmaker, good-bye!"

"I only want to know for certain who is the head," said Edward Henry,
"because I mean to invite the head of the theatrical profession to lay
the corner-stone of my new theatre."

"Ah!"

"When do you start on your world’s tour, Sir John?"

"I leave Tilbury with my entire company, scenery and effects, on the
morning of Tuesday week, by the _Kandahar_.  I shall play first in
Cairo."

"How awkward!" said Edward Henry.  "I meant to ask you to lay the stone
on the very next afternoon--Wednesday, that is!"

"Indeed!"

"Yes, Sir John.  The ceremony will be a very original affair--very
original!"

"A foundation-stone-laying!" mused Sir John. "But if you’re already up
to the first floor, how can you be laying the foundation-stone on
Wednesday week?"

"I didn’t say foundation-stone.  I said corner-stone," Edward Henry
corrected him.  "An entire novelty!  That’s why we can’t be ready before
Wednesday week."

"And you want to advertise your house by getting the head of the
profession to assist?"

"That is exactly my idea."

"Well," said Sir John.  "Whatever else you may lack, Mr. Alderman, you
are not lacking in nerve, if you expect to succeed in _that_."

Edward Henry smiled.

"I have already heard, in a round-about way," he replied, "that Sir
Gerald Pompey would not be unwilling to officiate.  My only difficulty
is that I’m a truthful man by nature.  Whoever officiates, I shall of
course have to have him labelled, in my own interests, as the head of
the theatrical profession, and I don’t want to say anything that isn’t
true."

There was a pause.

"Now, Sir John, couldn’t you stay a day or two longer in London and join
the ship at Marseilles instead of going on board at Tilbury?"

"But I have made all my arrangements.  The whole world knows that I am
going on board at Tilbury."

Just then the door opened and a servant announced:

"Mr. Carlo Trent."

Sir John Pilgrim rushed like a locomotive to the threshold and seized
both Carlo Trent’s hands with such a violence of welcome that Carlo
Trent’s eyeglass fell out of his eye and the purple ribbon dangled to
his waist.

"Come in, come in!" said Sir John.  "And begin to read at once.  I’ve
been looking out of the window for you for the last quarter of an hour.
Alderman, this is Mr. Carlo Trent, the well-known dramatic poet.  Trent,
this is one of the greatest geniuses in London....  Ah!  You know each
other?  It’s not surprising!  No, don’t stop to shake hands.  Sit down
here, Trent.  Sit down on this chair....  Here, Snip, take his hat.
Worry it!  Worry it!  Now, Trent, don’t read to _me_.  It might make you
nervous and hurried.  Read to Miss Taft and Chung, and to Mr. Givington
over there.  Imagine that they are the great and enlightened public.
You have imagination, haven’t you, being a poet?"

Sir John had accomplished the change of mood with the rapidity of a
transformation-scene--in which form of art, by the way, he was a great
adept.

Carlo Trent, somewhat breathless, took a manuscript from his pocket,
opened it, and announced: "The Orient Pearl."

"Oh!" breathed Edward Henry.

For some thirty minutes Edward Henry listened to hexameters, the first
he had ever heard.  The effect of them on his moral organism was worse
even than he had expected.  He glanced about at the other auditors.
Givington had opened a box of tubes and was spreading colours on his
palette.  The Chinaman’s eyes were closed while his face still grinned.
Snip was asleep on the parquet.  Miss Taft bit the end of a pencil with
her agreeable teeth.  Sir John Pilgrim lay at full length on a sofa,
occasionally lifting his legs.  Edward Henry despaired of help in his
great need.  But just as his desperation was becoming too acute to be
borne, Carlo Trent ejaculated the word "Curtain."  It was the first word
that Edward Henry had clearly understood.

"That’s the first act," said Carlo Trent, wiping his face.  Snip
awakened.

Edward Henry rose and, in the hush, tiptoed round the sofa.

"Good-bye, Sir John," he whispered.

"You’re not going?"

"I am, Sir John."

The head of his profession sat up.  "How right you are!" said he.  "How
right you are.  Trent, I knew from the first words it wouldn’t do.  It
lacks colour.  I want something more crimson, more like the brighter
parts of this jacket, something--"  He waved hands in the air.  "The
alderman agrees with me.  He’s going.  Don’t trouble to read any more,
Trent.  But drop in any time--any time. Chung, what o’clock is it?"

"It is nearly noon," said Edward Henry in the tone of an old friend.
"Well, I’m sorry you can’t oblige me, Sir John.  I’m off to see Sir
Gerald Pompey now."

"But who says I can’t oblige you?" protested Sir John.  "Who knows what
sacrifices I would not make in the highest interests of the profession?
Alderman, you jump to conclusions with the agility of an acrobat, but
they are false conclusions!  Miss Taft, the telephone!  Chung, my coat!
Good-bye, Trent, good-bye!"

An hour later Edward Henry met Mr. Marrier at the Grand Babylon Hotel.

"Well, sir," said Mr. Marrier, "you are the greatest man that ever
lived!"

"Why?"

Mr. Marrier showed him the stop-press news of a penny evening paper,
which read: "Sir John Pilgrim has abandoned his ceremonious departure
from Tilbury in order to lay the corner-stone of the new Regent Theatre
on Wednesday week.  He and Miss Cora Pryde will join the _Kandahar_ at
Marseilles."

"You needn’t do any advertaysing," said Mr. Marrier. "Pilgrim will do
all the advertaysing for you."



                                  III.


Edward Henry and Mr. Marrier worked together admirably that afternoon on
the arrangements for the corner-stone-laying.  And--such was the
interaction of their separate enthusiasms--it soon became apparent that
all London (in the only right sense of the word "all") must and would be
at the ceremony.  Characteristically, Mr. Marrier happened to have a
list or catalogue of all London in his pocket, and Edward Henry
appreciated him more than ever.  But towards four o’clock Mr. Marrier
annoyed and even somewhat alarmed Edward Henry by a mysterious change of
mien.  His assured optimism slipped away from him.  He grew uneasy,
darkly preoccupied, and inefficient.  At last when the clock in the room
struck four, and Edward Henry failed to hear it, Mr. Marrier said:

"I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse me now."

"Why?"

"I told you I had an appointment for tea at four."

"Did you?  What is it?" Edward Henry demanded with an employer’s
instinctive assumption that souls as well as brains can be bought for
such sums as three pounds a week.

"I have a lady coming to tea, here; that is, downstairs."

"In this hotel?"

"Yes."

"Who is it?" Edward Henry pursued lightly, for though he appreciated Mr.
Marrier, he also despised him.  However, he found the grace to add: "May
one ask?"

"It’s Miss Elsie April."

"Do you mean to say, Marrier," complained Edward Henry, "that you’ve
known Miss Elsie April all these months and never told me? ... There
aren’t two, I suppose?  It’s the cousin or something of Rose Euclid?"

Mr. Marrier nodded.  "The fact is," he said, "she and I are joint
honorary organising secretaries for the annual conference of the Azure
Society.  You know, it leads the New Thought movement in England."

"You never told me that either."

"Didn’t I, sir?  I didn’t think it would interest you.  Besides, both
Miss April and I are comparatively new members."

"Oh!" said Edward Henry with all the canny provincial’s conviction of
his own superior shrewdness; and he repeated, so as to intensify this
conviction and impress it on others, "Oh!"  In the undergrowth of his
mind was the thought: "How dare this man, whose brains belong to me, be
the organising secretary of something that I don’t know anything about
and don’t want to know anything about?"

"Yes," said Mr. Marrier modestly.

"I say," Edward Henry enquired warmly, with an impulsive gesture, "who
is she?"

"Who is she?" repeated Mr. Marrier blankly.

"Yes.  What does she do?"

"Doesn’t do anything," said Mr. Marrier. "Very good amateur actress.
Goes about a great deal.  Her mother was on the stage.  Married a
wealthy wholesale corset-maker."

"Who did?  Miss April?"  Edward Henry had a twinge.

"No; her mother.  Both parents are dead, and Miss April has an income--a
considerable income."

"What do you call considerable?"

"Five or six thousand a year."

"The deuce!" murmured Edward Henry.

"May have lost a bit of it, of course," Mr. Marrier hedged.  "But not
much, not much!"

"Well," said Edward Henry, smiling.  "What about _my_ tea?  Am I to have
tea all by myself?"

"Will you come down and meet her?"  Mr. Marrier’s expression approached
the wistful.

"Well," said Edward Henry, "it’s an idea, isn’t it?  Why should I be the
only person in London who doesn’t know Miss Elsie April?"

It was ten minutes past four when they descended into the electric
publicity of the Grand Babylon. Amid the music and the rattle of
crockery and the gliding waiters and the large nodding hats that
gathered more and more thickly round the tables, there was no sign of
Elsie April.

"She may have been and gone away again," said Edward Henry,
apprehensive.

"Oh, no!  She wouldn’t go away."  Mr. Marrier was positive.

In the tone of a man with an income of two hundred pounds a week he
ordered a table to be prepared for three.

At ten minutes to five he said:

"I hope she _hasn’t_ been and gone away again!"

Edward Henry began to be gloomy and resentful. The crowded and
factitious gaiety of the place actually annoyed him.  If Elsie April had
been and gone away again, he objected to such silly feminine conduct.
If she was merely late, he equally objected to such unconscionable
inexactitude.  He blamed Mr. Marrier.  He considered that he had the
right to blame Mr. Marrier because he paid him three pounds a week.  And
he very badly wanted his tea.

Then their four eyes, which for forty minutes had scarcely left the
entrance staircase, were rewarded.  She came in furs, gleaming white kid
gloves, gold chains, a gold bag, and a black velvet hat.

"I’m not late, am I?" she said after the introduction.

"No," they both replied.  And they both meant it.  For she was like fine
weather.  The forty minutes of waiting were forgotten, expunged from the
records of time, just as the memory of a month of rain is obliterated by
one splendid sunny day.



                                  IV.


Edward Henry enjoyed the tea, which was bad, to an extraordinary degree.
He became uplifted in the presence of Miss Elsie April; whereas Mr.
Marrier, strangely, drooped to still deeper depths of unaccustomed inert
melancholy.  Edward Henry decided that she was every bit as piquant,
challenging, and delectable as he had imagined her to be on the day when
he ate an artichoke at the next table to hers at Wilkins’s.  She
coincided exactly with his remembrance of her, except that she was now
slightly more plump.  Her contours were effulgent--there was no other
word.  Beautiful she was not, for she had a turned-up nose; but what
charm she radiated!  Every movement and tone enchanted Edward Henry.  He
was enchanted not at intervals, by a chance gesture, but all the
time--when she was serious, when she smiled, when she fingered her
teacup, when she pushed her furs back over her shoulders, when she spoke
of the weather, when she spoke of the social crisis, and when she made
fun, with a certain brief absence of restraint, rather in her artichoke
manner of making fun.

He thought and believed:

"This is the finest woman I ever saw!"  He clearly perceived the
inferiority of other women, whom nevertheless he admired and liked, such
as the Countess of Chell and Lady Woldo.

It was not her brains, nor her beauty, nor her stylishness that affected
him.  No!  It was something mysterious and dizzying that resided in
every particle of her individuality.

He thought:

"I’ve often and often wanted to see her again. And now I’m having tea
with her!"  And he was happy.

"Have you got that list, Mr. Marrier?" she asked in her low and
thrilling voice.  So saying, she raised her eyebrows in expectation--a
delicious effect, especially behind her half-raised white veil.

Mr. Marrier produced a document.

"But that’s _my_ list!" said Edward Henry.

"Your list?"

"I’d better tell you."  Mr. Marrier essayed a rapid explanation.  "Mr.
Machin wanted a list of the raight sort of people to ask to the
corner-stone-laying of his theatah.  So I used this as a basis."

Elsie April smiled again.  "Ve-ry good!" she approved.

"What is your list, Marrier?" asked Edward Henry.

It was Elsie who replied:

"People to be invited to the dramatic _soirée_ of the Azure Society.  We
give six a year.  No title is announced.  Nobody except a committee of
three knows even the name of the author of the play that is to be
performed.  Everything is kept a secret.  Even the author doesn’t know
that his play has been chosen.  Don’t you think it’s a delightful idea?
... An offspring of the New Thought!"

He agreed that it was a delightful idea.

"Shall I be invited?" he asked.

She answered gravely: "I don’t know."

"Are you going to play in it?"

She paused....  "Yes."

"Then you must let me come.  Talking of plays--"

He stopped.  He was on the edge of facetiously relating the episode 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 show.  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 actually 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 dare say 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 taxicab, rolling along the Embankment towards the
Buckingham Palace Hotel, where she said she lived.  He was happy.  "Why
am I happy?" he thought.  "What is there in her that makes me happy?"
He did not know.  But he knew that he had never been in a taxicab, or
anywhere else, with any woman half so elegant.  Her elegance flattered
him enormously.  Here he was, a provincial man of business, ruffling it
with the best of them! ... And she was young in her worldly maturity.
Was she twenty-seven?  She could not be more.  She looked straight in
front of her, faintly smiling....  Yes, he was fully aware that he was a
married man.  He had a distinct vision of the angelic Nellie, of the
three children, and of his mother.  But it seemed to him that his own
case differed in some very subtle and yet effective manner from the
similar case of any other married man. And he lived, unharassed by
apprehensions, in the lively joy of the moment.

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

"Why?"

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

"Oh, yes, I should."

"I shouldn’t feel it so."  And then with a swift disarrangement of all
the folds of her skirt she turned and faced him.  "Mr. Machin, do you
know why I’ve let you come with me?"

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

She grew even graver, shaking her head.

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

"Miss Euclid?  Me ruined Miss Euclid?"

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

He blushed.  "Excuse me," he said, "I did no such thing.  I simply
bought her option from her. She was absolutely free to keep the option
or let it go."

"The fact remains," said Elsie April, with humid eyes, "the fact remains
that she’d set her heart on having that theatre, and you failed her at
the last instant.  And she has nothing, and you’ve got the theatre
entirely in your own hands.  I’m not so silly as to suppose that you
can’t defend yourself legally.  But let me tell you that Rose went to
the United States heart-broken, and she’s playing to empty houses
there--empty houses!  Whereas she might have been here in London,
interested in her theatre, and preparing for a successful season."

"I’d no idea of this," breathed Edward Henry. He was dashed.  "I’m
awfully sorry!"

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

Silence fell.  He knew not what to say.  He felt himself in one way
innocent, but he felt himself in another way blackly guilty.  His
remorse for the telephone-trick which he had practised on Rose Euclid
burst forth again after a long period of quiescence simulating death,
and actually troubled him....  No, he was not guilty!  He insisted in
his heart that he was not guilty!  And yet--and yet--

No taxicab ever travelled so quickly as that taxi-cab. Before he could
gather together his forces it had arrived beneath the awning of the
Buckingham Palace Hotel.

His last words to her were:

"Now, I sha’nt change the day of my stone-laying. But don’t worry about
your conference. You know it’ll be perfectly all right."  He spoke
archly, with a brave attempt at cajolery; but in the recesses of his
soul he was not sure that she had not defeated him in this their first
encounter.  However, Seven Sachs might talk as he chose--she was not
such a persuasive creature as all that!  She had scarcely even tried to
be persuasive.

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

"Marrier, I’ve got a great idea.  We’ll have that corner-stone-laying at
night.  After the theatres. Say half-past eleven.  Torchlight!
Fireworks from the cranes!  It’ll tickle old Pilgrim to death.  I shall
have a marquee with match-boarding sides fixed up inside, and heat it
with a few of those smokeless stoves.  We can easily lay on electricity.
It will be absolutely the most sensational stone-laying that ever was.
It’ll be in all the papers all over the blessed world.  Think of it!
Torches!  Fireworks from the cranes! ... But I won’t change the
day--neither for Miss April nor anybody else."

Mr. Marrier dissolved in laudations.

"Well," Edward Henry agreed with false diffidence, "it’ll knock spots
off some of ’em in this town!"

He felt that he had snatched victory out of defeat.  But the next moment
he was capable of feeling that Elsie April had defeated him even in his
victory.  Anyhow, she was a most disconcerting and fancy-monopolising
creature.

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



                                  VI.


"Come up here, Sir John," Edward Henry called.  "You’ll see better, and
you’ll be out of the crowd.  And I’ll show you something."

He stood, in a fur coat, at the top of a short flight of rough-surfaced
steps between two unplastered walls--a staircase which ultimately was to
form part of an emergency exit from the dress-circle of the Regent
Theatre.  Sir John Pilgrim, also in a fur coat, stood near the bottom of
the steps, with a glare of a Wells light full on him and throwing his
shadow almost up to Edward Henry’s feet.  Around, Edward Henry could
descry the vast mysterious forms of the building’s skeleton--black in
places, but in other places lit up by bright rays from the gaiety below,
and showing glimpses of that gaiety in the occasional revelation of a
woman’s cloak through slits in the construction.  High overhead, two
gigantic cranes interlaced their arms; and even higher than the cranes,
shone the stars of the clear spring night.

The hour was nearly half-past twelve.  The ceremony was concluded--and
successfully concluded. All London had indeed been present.  Half the
aristocracy of England, and far more than half the aristocracy of the
London stage!  The entire preciosity of the metropolis!  Journalists
with influence enough to plunge the whole of Europe into war! In one
short hour Edward Henry’s right hand (peeping out from the superb fur
coat which he had had the wit to buy) had made the acquaintance of
scores upon scores of the most celebrated right hands in Britain.  He
had the sensation that in future, whenever he walked about the best
streets of the West End, he would be continually compelled to stop and
chat with august and renowned acquaintances, and that he would always be
taking off his hat to fine ladies who flashed by nodding from powerful
motor-cars.  Indeed, Edward Henry was surprised at the number of famous
people who seemed to have nothing to do but attend advertising rituals
at midnight or thereabouts.  Sir John Pilgrim had, as Marrier predicted,
attended to the advertisements.  But Edward Henry had helped. And on the
day itself the evening newspapers had taken the bit between their teeth
and run off with the affair at a great pace.  The affair was on all the
contents-bills hours before it actually happened. Edward Henry had been
interviewed several times, and had rather enjoyed that.  Gradually he
had perceived that his novel idea for a corner-stone-laying had caught
the facile imagination of the London populace.  For that night at least
he was famous--as famous as anybody!

Sir John had made a wondrous picturesque figure of himself as, in a
raised corner of the crowded and beflagged marquee, he had flourished a
trowel and talked about the great and enlightened public, and about the
highest function of the drama, and about the duty of the artist to
elevate, and about the solemn responsibility of theatrical managers, and
about the absence of petty jealousies in the world of the stage.
Everybody had vociferously applauded, while reporters turned rapidly the
pages of their note-books.  "Ass!" Edward Henry had said to himself with
much force and sincerity,--meaning Sir John,--but he too had
vociferously applauded; for he was from the Five Towns, and in the Five
Towns people are like that!  Then Sir John had declared the corner-stone
well and truly laid (it was on the corner which the electric sign of the
future was destined to occupy), and, after being thanked, had wandered
off shaking hands here and there absently, to arrive at length in the
office of the clerk of the works, where Edward Henry had arranged
suitably to refresh the stone-layer and a few choice friends of both
sexes.

He had hoped that Elsie April would somehow reach that little office.
But Elsie April was absent, indisposed.  Her absence made the one
blemish on the affair’s perfection.  Elsie April, it appeared, had been
struck down by a cold which had entirely deprived her of her voice, so
that the performance of the Azure Society’s Dramatic Club, so eagerly
anticipated by all London, had had to be postponed. Edward Henry bore
the misfortune of the Azure Society with stoicism, but he had been
extremely disappointed by the invisibility of Elsie April at his
stone-laying.  His eyes had wanted her.

Sir John, awaking apparently out of a dream when Edward Henry had
summoned him twice, climbed the uneven staircase and joined his host and
youngest rival on the insecure planks and gangways that covered the
first floor of the Regent Theatre.

"Come higher," said Edward Henry, mounting upward to the beginnings of
the second story, above which hung suspended from the larger crane the
great cage that was employed to carry brick and stone from the ground.

The two fur coats almost mingled.

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

Now Edward Henry hated to be addressed as "young man," especially in the
patronising tone which Sir John used.  Moreover, he had a suspicion that
in Sir John’s mind was the illusion that Sir John alone was responsible
for the creation of the Regent Theatre--that without Sir John’s aid as a
stone-layer it could never have existed.

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

"In twelve months from now, before I come back from my world’s tour,
you’ll be ready to get rid of this thing on any terms.  You will be
wishing that you had imitated my example and kept out of Piccadilly
Circus.  Piccadilly Circus is sinister, my Alderman--sinister."

"Come up into the cage, Sir John," said Edward Henry.  "You’ll get a
still better view.  Rather fine, isn’t it, even from here?"

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

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

"We are alone with London!"

Edward Henry thought:

"Cuckoo!"

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

"Who’s there?" Edward Henry called.

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

"Who is it?" muttered Sir John.

"Alloyd, the architect," Edward Henry answered, and then calling loud:
"Come up here, Alloyd."

The muffled and coated figure approached, hesitated, and then joined the
other two in the cage.

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

"Ah!" said Sir John, bending towards Alloyd. "Are you the genius who
draws those amusing little lines and scrawls on transparent paper, Mr.
Alloyd? Tell me, are they really necessary for a building, or do you
only do them for your own fun?  Quite between ourselves, you know!  I’ve
often wondered."

Said Mr. Alloyd with a pale smile:

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

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

"Right you are!" Edward Henry complied. Close by, but somewhat above
them, was the crane-engine, manned by an engineer whom Edward Henry was
paying for overtime.  A signal was given, and the cage containing the
proprietor and the architect of the theatre and Sir John Pilgrim bounded
most startlingly up into the air.  Simultaneously it began to revolve
rapidly on its cable, as such cages will, whether filled with bricks or
with celebrities.

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

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

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

The wind blew cold above the chimneys.

The cage came to a standstill exactly at the peak of the other crane.
London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of
Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street,
and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated
map, over which crawled mannikins and toy autobuses.  At their feet a
long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another, with
the guests of the evening.  The metropolis stretched away, lifting to
the north, and sinking to the south into jewelled river on whose curved
bank rose messages of light concerning whisky, tea, and beer.  The
peaceful nocturnal roar of the city, dwindling every moment now, reached
them like an emanation from another world.

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

He had taken a box of fuses from his pocket. He struck one, and his
companions in the swaying cage now saw that a tremendous rocket was hung
to the peak of the other crane.  He lighted the fuse....  An instant of
deathly suspense! ... And then with a terrific and a shattering bang and
splutter the rocket shot towards the kingdom of heaven, and there burst
into a vast dome of red blossoms which, irradiating a square mile of
roofs, descended slowly and softly on the West End like a benediction.

"You always want crimson, don’t you, Sir John?" said Edward Henry, and
the easy cheeriness of his voice gradually tranquillised the alarm
natural to two very earthly men who for the first time found themselves
suspended insecurely over a gulf.

"I have seen nothing so impressive since the Russian ballet," murmured
Mr. Alloyd, recovering.

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

Sir John Pilgrim, pretending now to be extremely brave, suddenly turned
on Edward Henry and in a convulsive grasp seized his hand.

"My friend," he said hoarsely, "a thought has just occurred to me: you
and I are the two most remarkable men in London!"  He glanced up as the
cage trembled.  "How thin that steel rope seems!"

The cage slowly descended, with many twists.

Edward Henry said not a word.  He was too deeply moved by his own
triumph to be able to speak.

"Who else but me," he reflected, exultant, "could have managed this
affair as I’ve managed it?  Did anyone else ever take Sir John Pilgrim
up into the sky like a load of bricks, and frighten his life out of
him?"

As the cage approached the platforms of the first story he saw two
people waiting there; one he recognised as the faithful, harmless
Marrier; the other was a woman.

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

"By Jove," exclaimed Alloyd under his breath, "what a beautiful figure!
No girl as attractive as that ever wanted _me_ urgently!  Some folks do
have luck!"

The woman had moved a little away when the cage landed.  Edward Henry
followed her along the planking.

It was Elsie April.

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

Her answering voice reached him, scarcely audible:

"I’m only hoarse.  My cousin Rose has arrived to-night in secret at
Tilbury by the _Minnetonka_."

"The _Minnetonka_!" he muttered.  Staggering coincidence!  Mystic
heralding of misfortune!

"I was sent for," the pale ghost of a delicate voice continued.  "She’s
broken, ruined; no courage left.  Awful fiasco in Chicago!  She’s hiding
now at a little hotel in Soho.  She absolutely declined to come to my
hotel.  I’ve done what I could for the moment.  As I was driving by here
just now I saw the rocket, and I thought of you.  I thought you ought to
know it.  I thought it was my duty to tell you."

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

A heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Excuse me, sir," said a strong, rough voice. "Are you the gent that
fired off the rocket?  It’s against the law to do that kind o’ thing
here, and you ought to know it.  I shall have to trouble you--"

It was a policeman of the C division.

Sir John was disappearing, with his stealthy and conspiratorial air,
down the staircase.




                              CHAPTER VIII

                           DEALING WITH ELSIE

                                   I.

The headquarters of the Azure Society were situate in Marloes Road, for
no other reason than that it happened so.  Though certain famous people
inhabit Marloes Road, no street could well be less fashionable than this
thoroughfare, which is very arid and very long, and a very long way off
the centre of the universe.

"The Azure Society, you know!" Edward Henry added when he had given the
exact address to the chauffeur of the taxi.

The chauffeur, however, did not know, and did not seem to be ashamed of
his ignorance.  His attitude indicated that he despised Marloes Road,
and was not particularly anxious for his vehicle to be seen therein,
especially on a wet night, but that nevertheless he would endeavour to
reach it.  When he did reach it, and observed the large concourse of
shining automobiles that struggled together in the rain in front of the
illuminated number named by Edward Henry, the chauffeur admitted to
himself that for once he had been mistaken, and his manner of receiving
money from Edward Henry was generously respectful.

Originally the headquarters of the Azure Society had been a seminary and
schoolmistress’ house. The thoroughness with which the buildings had
been transformed showed that money was not among the things which the
society had to search for.  It had rich resources, and it had also high
social standing; and the deferential commissionaires at the doors and
the fluffy-aproned, appealing girls who gave away programmes in the
foyer were a proof that the society, while doubtless anxious about such
subjects as the persistence of individuality after death, had no desire
to reconstitute the community on a democratic basis.  It was above such
transient trifles of reform, and its high endeavours were confined to
questions of immortality, of the infinite, of sex, and of art: which
questions it discussed in fine raiment and with all the punctilio of
courtly politeness.

Edward Henry was late, in common with some two hundred other people of
whom the majority were elegant women wearing Paris or almost Paris gowns
with a difference.  As on the current of the variegated throng he
drifted through corridors into the bijou theatre of the society, he
could not help feeling proud of his own presence there; and yet at the
same time he was scorning, in his Five Towns way, the preciosity and the
simperings of these his fellow creatures.  Seated in the auditorium, at
the end of a row, he was aware of an even keener satisfaction as people
bowed and smiled at him; for the theatre was so tiny and the reunion so
choice that it was obviously an honour and a distinction to have been
invited to such an exclusive affair.  To the evening first fixed for the
dramatic _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 recognised and acknowledged, and the clapping had in nowise
disturbed her. Evidently she accepted it as a matter of course.  How
famous, after all, she must be, if such an audience would pay her such a
meed!  She was pale, and dressed glitteringly in white.  She seemed
younger, more graceful, much more handsome, more in accordance with her
renown.  She was at home and at ease up there in the brightness of
publicity.  The imposing legend of her long career had survived the
eclipse in the United States.  Who could have guessed that some ten days
before she had landed heart-broken and ruined at Tilbury from the
_Minnetonka_?

Edward Henry was impressed.

"She’s none so dusty!" he said to himself in the incomprehensible slang
of the Five Towns.  The phrase was a high compliment to Rose Euclid,
aged fifty and looking anything you like over thirty.  It measured the
extent to which he was impressed.

Yes, he felt guilty.  He had to drop his eyes, lest hers should catch
them.  He examined guiltily the programme, which announced "The New Don
Juan," a play "in three acts and in verse"--author unnamed.  The curtain
went up.



                                  II.


And with the rising of the curtain began Edward Henry’s torture and
bewilderment.  The scene disclosed a cloth upon which was painted, to
the right, a vast writhing purple cuttlefish whose finer tentacles were
lost above the proscenium-arch, and to the left an enormous crimson
oblong patch with a hole in it.  He referred to the programme, which
said: "Act. I.  A castle in the forest," and also "Scenery and costumes
designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A."  The cuttlefish, then, was the
purple forest, or perhaps one tree in the forest, and the oblong patch
was the crimson castle.  The stage remained empty, and Edward Henry had
time to perceive that the footlights were unlit, and that rays came only
from the flies and from the wings.

He glanced round.  Nobody had blenched. Quite confused, he referred
again to the programme and deciphered in the increasing gloom, "Lighting
by Cosmo Clark," in very large letters.

Two yellow-clad figures of no particular sex glided into view, and at
the first words which they uttered Edward Henry’s heart seemed in
apprehension to cease to beat.  A fear seized him.  A few more words,
and the fear became a positive assurance and realisation of evil.  "The
New Don Juan" was simply a pseudonym for Carlo Trent’s "Orient Pearl"!
... He had always known that it would be.  Ever since deciding to accept
the invitation he had lived under just that menace.  "The Orient Pearl"
seemed to be pursuing him like a sinister destiny.

Weakly he consulted yet again the programme. Only one character bore a
name familiar to the Don Juan story; to wit, "Haidee"; and opposite that
name was the name of Elsie April.  He waited for her,--he had no other
interest in the evening,--and he waited in resignation.  A young female
troubadour (styled in the programme "the messenger") emerged from the
unseen depths of the forest in the wings and ejaculated to the hero and
his friend: "The woman appears."  But it was not Elsie that appeared.
Six times that troubadour messenger emerged and ejaculated, "The woman
appears," and each time Edward Henry was disappointed. But at the
seventh heralding--the heralding of the seventh and highest heroine of
this drama in hexameters--Elsie did at length appear.

And Edward Henry became happy.  He understood little more of the play
than at the historic breakfast-party of Sir John Pilgrim; he was well
confirmed in his belief that the play was exactly as preposterous as a
play in verse must necessarily be; his manly contempt for verse was more
firmly established than ever--but Elsie April made an exquisite figure
between the castle and the forest; her voice did really set up physical
vibrations in his spine. He was deliciously convinced that if she
remained on the stage from everlasting to everlasting, just so long
could he gaze thereat without surfeit and without other desire.  The
mischief was that she did not remain on the stage.  With despair he saw
her depart; and the close of the act was ashes in his mouth.

The applause was tremendous.  It was not as tremendous as that which had
greeted the plate-smashing comedy at the Hanbridge Empire, but it was
far more than sufficiently enthusiastic to startle and shock Edward
Henry.  In fact, his cold indifference was so conspicuous amid that
fever, that in order to save his face he had to clap and to smile.

And the dreadful thought crossed his mind, traversing it like the
shudder of a distant earthquake that presages complete destruction:

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

For hitherto, though he had often admitted to himself that he was a
provincial, he had never done so with sincerity; but always in a manner
of playful and rather condescending badinage.



                                  III.


"Did you ever see such scenery and costumes?" some one addressed him
suddenly when the applause had died down.  It was Mr. Alloyd, who had
advanced up the aisle from the back row of the stalls.

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

"It’s wonderful how Givington has managed to get away from the childish
realism of the modern theatre," said Mr. Alloyd, "without being
ridiculous."

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

"Do you mean it’s too realistic for you?" cried Mr. Alloyd.  "Well, you
_are_ advanced!  I didn’t know you were as anti-representational as all
that!"

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

"Well," answered Mr. Alloyd low and cautiously, with a somewhat shamed
grin, "between you and me, I think the play’s bosh."

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

The word "bosh" was almost the first word of the discussion which he had
comprehended, and the honest familiar sound of it did him good.
Nevertheless, keeping his presence of mind, he had forborne to welcome
it openly.  He wondered what on earth "anti-representational" could
mean.  Similar conversations were proceeding around him, and each could
be very closely heard, for the reason that, the audience being frankly
intellectual and anxious to exchange ideas, the management had wisely
avoided the expense and noise of an orchestra.  The entr’acte was like a
_conversazione_ of all the cultures.

"I wish you’d give us some scenery and costumes like this in _your_
theatre," said Alloyd as he strolled away.

The remark stabbed him like a needle; the pain was gone in an instant,
but it left a vague fear behind it, as of the menace of a mortal injury.
It is a fact that Edward Henry blushed and grew gloomy, and he scarcely
knew why.  He looked about him timidly, half defiantly.  A magnificently
arrayed woman in the row in front, somewhat to the right, leaned back
and towards him, and behind her fan said:

"You’re the only manager here, Mr. Machin! How alive and alert you are!"
Her voice seemed to be charged with a hidden meaning.

"D’you think so?" said Edward Henry.  He had no idea who she might be.
He had probably shaken hands with her at his stone-laying, but if so he
had forgotten her face.  He was fast becoming one of the oligarchical
few who are recognised by far more people than they recognise.

"A beautiful play!" said the woman.  "Not merely poetic, but
intellectual.  And an extraordinarily acute criticism of modern
conditions!"

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

"Well, of course candidly," said the woman, "I think it’s silly.  I dare
say I’m old-fashioned."

"I dare say," murmured Edward Henry.

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

"They!"  Who?  Who in the world of London had been labelling him as
ironic?  He was rather proud.

"I hope if you _do_ do this kind of play,--and we’re all looking to you,
Mr. Machin," said the lady making a new start,--"I hope you won’t go in
for these costumes and scenery.  That would never do!"

Again the stab of the needle!

"It wouldn’t," he said.

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

An orange telegram came travelling from hand to hand along that row of
stalls, and ultimately, after skipping a few persons, reached the
magnificently arrayed woman, who read it and then passed it to Edward
Henry.

"Splendid!" she exclaimed.  "Splendid!"

Edward Henry read: "Released.  Isabel."

"What does it mean?"

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

"Really!"

Edward Henry’s ignorance of affairs round about the centre of the
universe was occasionally distressing--to himself in particular.  And
just now he gravely blamed Mr. Marrier, who had neglected to post him
about Isabel Joy.  But how could Marrier honestly earn his three pounds
a week if he was occupied night and day with the organising and
management of these precious dramatic _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. Marrier, who
in the midst of the fulminating applause after the second act seemed to
be inexplicably standing over him, having appeared in an instant out of
nowhere like a genie.

The fact was that Edward Henry had been gently and innocently dozing.
It was in part the deep obscurity of the auditorium, in part his own
physical fatigue, and in part the secret nature of poetry that had been
responsible for this restful slumber.  He had remained awake without
difficulty during the first portion of the act, in which Elsie
April--the orient pearl--had had a long scene of emotion and tears,
played, as Edward Henry thought, magnificently in spite of its inherent
ridiculousness; but later, when gentle _Haidee_ had vanished away and
the fateful troubadour messenger had begun to resume her announcements
of "The woman appears," Edward Henry’s soul had miserably yielded to his
body and to the temptation of darkness.  The upturned lights and the
ringing hosannahs had roused him to a full sense of sin, but he had not
quite recovered all his faculties when Marrier startled him.

"Yes, yes!  Of course!  I was coming," he answered a little petulantly.
But no petulance could impair the beaming optimism on Mr. Marrier’s
features.  To judge by those features, Mr. Marrier, in addition to
having organised and managed the _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.

Elsie April’s dressing-room was small and very thickly populated, and
the threshold of it was barred by eager persons who were half in and
half out of the room.  Through these Mr. Marrier’s authority forced a
way.  The first man Edward Henry recognised in the tumult of bodies was
Mr. Rollo Wrissell, whom he had not seen since their meeting at
Slosson’s.

"Mr. Wrissell," said the glowing Marrier, "let me introduce Mr. Alderman
Machin, of the Regent Theatah."

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

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

"How d’you do, Mr. Machin?" said he.  "I hope you’ll forgive me for not
having followed your advice."

This was a lesson to Edward Henry.  He learnt that you should never show
a wound, and if possible never feel one.  He admitted that in such
details of social conduct London might be in advance of the Five Towns,
despite the Five Towns’ admirable downrightness.

Lady Woldo was also in the dressing-room, glorious in black.  Her beauty
was positively disconcerting, and the more so on this occasion as she
was bending over the faded Rose Euclid, who sat in a corner surrounded
by a court.  This court, comprising comparatively uncelebrated young
women and men, listened with respect to the conversation of the peeress
(who called Rose "my dear"), the great star-actress, and the now
somewhat notorious Five Towns character, Edward Henry Machin.

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

"Oh!  My word, yes!" replied Lady Woldo nicely, warmly, yet with a
certain perfunctoriness. Edward Henry was astonished that everybody was
not passionately enthusiastic about the charm of Elsie’s performance.
Then Lady Woldo added: "But what a part for Miss Euclid!  What a part
for her!"

And there were murmurs of approbation.

Rose Euclid gazed at Edward Henry palely and weakly.  He considered her
much less effective here than in her box.  But her febrile gaze was
effective enough to produce in him the needle-stab again, the feeling of
gloom, of pessimism, of being gradually overtaken by an unseen and
mysterious avenger.

"Yes, indeed!" said he.

He thought to himself: "Now’s the time for me to behave like Edward
Henry Machin, and teach these people a thing or two!"  But he could not.

A pretty young girl summoned all her forces to address the great
proprietor of the Regent, to whom, however, she had not been introduced,
and with a charming nervous earnest lisp said:

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

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

"We were sure _you_ would!"

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

"D’you know that not another manager has taken the trouble to come
here!" said a second earnest young woman.

Edward Henry’s self-consciousness was now acute. He would have paid a
ransom to be alone on a desert island in the Indian seas.  He looked
downwards, and noticed that all these bright eager persons, women and
men, were wearing blue stockings or socks.

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

The next instant he was talking alone to Elsie in another corner, while
the rest of the room respectfully observed.

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

A little paint did her no harm, and the accentuation of her eyebrows and
lips and the calculated disorder of her hair were not more than her
powerful effulgent physique could stand.  In a costume of green and
silver she was magnificent, overwhelmingly magnificent.

Her varying voice and her glance, at once sincere, timid, and bold,
produced the most singular sensations behind Edward Henry’s soft-frilled
shirt-front. And he thought that he had never been through any
experience so disturbing and so fine as just standing in front of her.

"I ought to be saying nice things to her," he reflected; but, no doubt
because he had been born in the Five Towns, he could not formulate in
his mind a single nice thing.

"Well, what do you think of it?" she asked, looking full at him, and the
glance too had a strange significance.  It was as if she had said: "Are
you a man, or aren’t you?"

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

"Now please!" she protested.  "Don’t begin in that strain.  I know I’m
very good for an amateur--"

"But really!  I’m not joking!"

She shook her head.

"What do you think of my part for Rose? Wouldn’t she be tremendous in
it?  Wouldn’t she be tremendous?  What a chance!"

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

"Yes," he admitted.  "Yes."

"Oh!  Here’s Carlo Trent," said she.

He heard Trent’s triumphant voice carrying the end of a conversation
into the room: "If he hadn’t been going away," Carlo Trent was saying,
"Pilgrim would have taken it.  Pilgrim--"

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

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

Then a bell began to ring and would not stop.

"You’re staying for the reception afterwards?" said Elsie April as the
room emptied.

"Is there one?"

"Of course."

It seemed to Edward Henry that they exchanged silent messages.



                                   V.


Some time after the last hexameter had rolled forth, and the curtain had
finally fallen on the immense and rapturous success of Carlo Trent’s
play in three acts and in verse, Edward Henry, walking about the crowded
stage where the reception was being held, encountered Elsie April, who
was still in her gorgeous dress of green and silver.  She was chatting
with Marrier, who instantly left her, thus displaying a discretion such
as an employer would naturally expect from a factotum to whom he was
paying three pounds a week.

Edward Henry’s heart began to beat in a manner which troubled him and
made him wonder what could be happening at the back of the soft-frilled
shirt-front that he had obtained in imitation of Mr. Seven Sachs.

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

She gazed at him under her emphasized eyebrows. He noticed that there
were little touches of red on her delightful nostrils.

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

She turned her back on all the amiable and intellectual babble,
descended three steps on the prompt side, and opened a door.  The swish
of her brocaded spreading skirt was loud and sensuous.  He followed her
into an obscure chamber in which several figures were moving to and fro
and talking.

"What’s this place?" he asked.  Involuntarily his voice was diminished
to a whisper.

"It’s one of the discussion-rooms," said she.  "It used to be a
classroom, I expect, before the society took the buildings over.  You
see the theatre was the general schoolroom."

They sat down inobtrusively in an embrasure. None among the mysterious
moving figures seemed to remark them.

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

"To begin with, it isn’t quite dark," she said. "There’s the light of
the street-lamp through the window.  But it has been found that serious
discussions can be carried on much better without too much light....
I’m not joking."  (It was as if in the gloom her ears had caught his
faint sardonic smile.)

Said the voice of one of the figures:

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

Suddenly, in the ensuing silence, there was a click and a tiny electric
lamp shot its beam.  The hand which held the lamp was the hand of Carlo
Trent. He raised it and flashed the trembling ray in the inquirer’s
face.  Edward Henry recalled Carlo’s objection to excessive electricity
in the private drawing-room at Wilkins’s.

"Why do you ask such a question?" Carlo Trent challenged the enquirer,
brandishing the lamp.  "I ask you why do you ask it?"

The other also drew forth a lamp and, as it were, cocked it and let it
off at the features of Carlo Trent.  And thus the two stood, statuesque
and lit, surrounded by shadowy witnesses of the discussion.

The door creaked and yet another figure, silhouetted for an instant
against the illumination of the stage, descended into the
discussion-chamber.

Carlo Trent tripped towards the newcomer, bent with his lamp, lifted
delicately the hem of the newcomer’s trousers, and gazed at the colour
of his sock, which was blue.

"All right!" said he.

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

"You’ve not answered me, sir," Carlo Trent faced once more his opponent
in the discussion. "You’ve not answered me."

Whereupon, the lamps being extinguished, they all filed forth, the door
swung to of its own accord, shutting out the sound of babble from the
stage, and Edward Henry and Elsie April were left silent and solitary to
the sole ray of the street-lamp.

All the Five Towns shrewdness in Edward Henry’s character, all the
husband in him, all the father in him, all the son in him, leapt to his
lips and tried to say to Elsie, "Shall _we_ go and inspect the champagne
and sandwiches too?" and failed to say these incantatory words of
salvation!

And the romantic adventurous fool in him rejoiced at their failure.  For
he was adventurously happy in his propinquity to that simple and sincere
creature. He was so happy, and his heart was so active, that he even
made no caustic characteristic comment on the singular behaviour of the
beings who had just abandoned them to their loneliness.  He was also
proud because he was sitting alone nearly in the dark with a piquant and
wealthy, albeit amateur, actress who had just participated in a triumph
at which the spiritual aristocracy of London had assisted.



                                  VI.


Two thoughts ran through his head, shooting in and out and to and fro
among his complex sensations of pleasure.  The first was that he had
never been in such a fix before, despite his enterprising habits. And
the second was that neither Elsie April nor anybody else connected with
his affairs in London had ever asked him whether he was married, nor
assumed by any detail of behaviour towards him that there existed the
possibility of his being married.  Of course he might, had he chosen,
have informed a few of them that a wife and children possessed him, but
then, really, would not that have been equivalent to attaching a label
to himself "Married"?--a procedure which had to him the stamp of
provinciality.

Elsie April said nothing.  And as she said nothing he was obliged to say
something, if only to prove to both of them that he was not a mere
tongue-tied provincial.  He said:

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

"Out of it?" she exclaimed, and her voice thrilled as she resented his
self-depreciation.

"It’s over my head--right over it!"

"Now, Mr. Machin," she said, dropping somewhat that rich, low voice, "I
quite understand that there are some things about the society you don’t
like, trifles that you’re inclined to laugh at.  _I_ know that.  Many of
us know it.  But it can’t be helped in an organisation like ours.  It’s
even essential.  Don’t be too hard on us.  Don’t be sarcastic."

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

"Honest?"  She turned to him quickly.  He could descry her face in the
gloom, and the forward bend of her shoulders, and the backward sweep of
her arms resting on the seat, and the straight droop of her Egyptian
shawl from her inclined body.

"Honest!" he solemnly insisted.

The exchange of this single word was so intimate that it shifted their
conversation to a different level--a level at which each seemed to be
assuring the other that intercourse between them could never be aught
but utterly sincere thenceforward, and that indeed in future they would
constitute a little society of their own, ideal in its organisation.

"Then you’re too modest," she said decidedly. "There was no one here
to-night who’s more respected than you are.  No one!  Immediately I
first spoke to you--I daresay you don’t remember that afternoon at the
Grand Babylon Hotel--I knew you weren’t like the rest.  And don’t I know
them?  Don’t I know them?"

"But how did you know I’m not like the rest?" asked Edward Henry.  The
line which she was taking had very much surprised him, and charmed him.
The compliment, so serious and urgent in tone, was intensely agreeable,
and it made an entirely new experience in his career.  He thought: "Oh!
There’s no mistake about it.  These London women are marvellous!
They’re just as straight and in earnest as the best of our little lot
down there.  But they’ve got something else.  There’s no comparison!"
The unique word to describe the indescribable floated into his head:
"Scrumptuous!"  What could not life be with such semi-divine creatures?
He dreamt of art drawing-rooms softly shaded at midnight.  And his
attitude towards even poetry was modified.

"I knew you weren’t like the rest," said she, "by your look; by the way
you say everything you _do_ say. We all know it.  And I’m sure you’re
far more than clever enough to be perfectly aware that we all know it.
Just see how everyone looked at you to-night!"

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

"I think I ought to tell you," she went on, "that I was rather unfair to
you that day in talking about my cousin--in the taxi.  You were quite
right to refuse to go into partnership with her.  She thinks so too.
We’ve talked it over, and we’re quite agreed.  Of course it did seem
hard--at the time, and her bad luck in America seemed to make it worse.
But you were quite right.  You can work much better alone.  You must
have felt that instinctively--far quicker than we felt it."

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

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

"Oh, Mr. Machin," she burst out, "you’ve got an unprecedented
opportunity, and, thank Heaven, you’re the man to use it!  We’re all
expecting so much from you, and we know we sha’n’t be disappointed."

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

"The theatre," said she gravely.  "You’re the one man that can save
London.  No one _in_ London can do it! ... _You_ have the happiness of
knowing what your mission is, and of knowing too that you are equal to
it.  What good fortune!  I wish I could say as much for myself.  I want
to do something!  I try!  But what can I do?  Nothing--really! You’ve no
idea of the awful loneliness that comes from a feeling of inability."

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

"Loneliness," she insisted.  Her little chin was now in her little hand,
and her dim face upturned.

And suddenly a sensation of absolute and marvellous terror seized Edward
Henry.  He was more afraid than he had ever been--and yet once or twice
in his life he had felt fear.  His sense of true perspective--one of his
most precious qualities--returned.  He thought: "I’ve got to get out of
this."  Well, the door was not locked.  It was only necessary to turn
the handle, and security lay on the other side of the door!  He had but
to rise and walk.  And he could not.  He might just as well have been
manacled in a prison-cell.  He was under an enchantment.

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

He stirred uneasily.

"About this play," he found himself saying.

And yet why should he mention the play in his fright? He pretended to
himself not to know why.  But he knew why.  His instinct had seen in the
topic of the play the sole avenue of salvation.

"A wonderful thing, isn’t it?"

"Oh, yes," he said; and then, most astonishingly to himself, added:
"I’ve decided to do it."

"We knew you would," she said calmly.  "At any rate I did....  You’ll
open with it of course."

"Yes," he answered desperately, and proceeded, with the most
extraordinary bravery: "If you’ll act in it."

Immediately on hearing these last words issue from his mouth he knew
that a fool had uttered them, and that the bravery was mere rashness;
for Elsie’s responding gesture reinspired him afresh with the exquisite
terror which he had already begun to conjure away.

"You think Miss Euclid ought to have the part," he added quickly, before
she could speak.

"Oh, I do!" cried Elsie positively and eagerly. "Rose will do simply
wonders with that part.  You see she can speak verse.  I can’t.  I’m
nobody.  I only took it because--"

"Aren’t you anybody?" he contradicted. "Aren’t you anybody?  I can just
tell you--"

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

But the door creaked.  The babble from the stage invaded the room.  And
in a second the enchantment was lifted from him.  Several people
entered.  He sighed, saying within himself to the disturbers:

"I’d have given you a hundred-pound piece if you’d been five minutes
sooner."

And yet simultaneously he regretted their arrival. And, more curious
still, though he well remembered the warning words of Mr. Seven Sachs
concerning Elsie April, he did not consider that they were justified.
She had not been a bit persuasive ... only...



                                  VII.


He sat down to the pianisto with a strange and agreeable sense of
security.  It is true that, owing to the time of year, the drawing-room
had been, in the figurative phrase, turned upside down by the process of
spring-cleaning, which his unexpected arrival had surprised in fullest
activity.  But he did not mind that.  He abode content among rolled
carpets, a swathed chandelier, piled chairs, and walls full of pale
rectangular spaces where pictures had been. Early that morning, after a
brief night spent partly in bed and partly in erect contemplation of his
immediate past and his immediate future, he had hurried back to his
pianisto and his home--to the beings and things that he knew and that
knew him.

In the train he had had the pleasure of reading in sundry newspapers
that "The Orient Pearl," by Carlo Trent (who was mentioned in terms of
startling respect and admiration), had been performed on the previous
evening at the dramatic _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 of excellent augury for London’s dramatic future, and
that the "upward movement" must on no account be thought to have failed
because of the failure of certain recent ill-judged attempts, by persons
who did not understand their business, to force it in particular
directions. And still further, that he, Edward Henry, had engaged for
the principal part Miss Rose Euclid, perhaps the greatest emotional
actress the English-speaking peoples had ever had, but who unfortunately
had not been sufficiently seen of late on the London stage, and that
this would be her first appearance after her recent artistic successes
in the United States.  And lastly, that Mr. Marrier (whose name would be
remembered in connection with ... etc., etc.) was Mr. E. H. Machin’s
acting manager and technical adviser.  Edward Henry could trace the hand
of Marrier in all the paragraphs.  Marrier had lost no time.

Mrs. Machin, senior, came into the drawing-room just as he was adjusting
the "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 unskillfully caught many of the tricks of that
metropolitan environment.  But now they all fell away from him, and he
was just Edward Henry--nay, he was almost the old Denry again.

"Who chose this mutton?" he asked as he bent over the juicy and rich
joint and cut therefrom exquisite thick slices with a carving-knife like
a razor.

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

"No.  It’s fine."

"Yes," said she, "I’m wondering whether you get aught as good as that in
these grand hotels, as you call ’em."

"We don’t," said Edward Henry.  First, it was true, and secondly he was
anxious to be propitiatory, for he had a plan to further.

He looked at his wife.  She was not talkative, but she had received him
in the hall with every detail of affection, if a little absent-mindedly,
owing to the state of the house.  She had not been caustic, like his
mother, about this male incursion into spring-cleaning.  She had not
informed the surrounding air that she failed to understand why them as
were in London couldn’t stop in London for a bit, as his mother had.
Moreover, though the spring-cleaning fully entitled her to wear a white
apron at meals, she was not wearing a white apron, which was a sign to
him that she still loved him enough to want to please him.  On the
whole, he was fairly optimistic about his plan of salvation.
Nevertheless, it was not until nearly the end of the meal, when one of
his mother’s ample pies was being consumed, that he began to try to
broach it.

"Nell," he said, "I suppose you wouldn’t care to come to London with
me?"

"Oh!" she answered smiling, a smile of a peculiar quality.  It was
astonishing how that simple woman could put just one-tenth of one per
cent. of irony into a good-natured smile.  "What’s the meaning of this?"
Then she flushed.  The flush touched Edward Henry in an extraordinary
manner.

("To think," he reflected, incredulously, "that only last night I was
talking in the dark to Elsie April--and here I am now!"  And he
remembered the glory of Elsie’s frock, and her thrilling voice in the
gloom, and that pose of hers as she leaned dimly forward.)

"Well," he said aloud, as naturally as he could. "That theatre’s
beginning to get up on its hind legs now, and I should like you to see
it."

A difficult pass for him, as regards his mother! This was the first time
he had ever overtly spoken of the theatre in his mother’s presence.  In
the best bedroom he had talked of it, but even there with a certain
self-consciousness and false casualness. Now his mother stared straight
in front of her with an expression of which she alone among human beings
had the monopoly.

"I should like to," said Nellie generously.

"Well," said he, "I’ve got to go back to town to-morrow.  Wilt come with
me, lass?"

"Don’t be silly, Edward Henry," said she. "How can I leave Mother in the
middle of all this spring-cleaning?"

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

"You won’t!" observed Mrs. Machin.

"I _have_ to go to-morrow, Nell," said Edward Henry.  "And I was
thinking you might as well come with me.  It will be a change for you."

(He said to himself: "And not only have I to go to-morrow, but you
absolutely must come with me, my girl.  That’s the one thing to do.")

"It would be a change for me," Nellie agreed. She was beyond doubt
flattered and calmly pleased. "But I can’t possibly come to-morrow.  You
can see that for yourself, dear."

"No, I can’t!" he cried impatiently.  "What does it matter?  Mother’ll
be here.  The kids’ll be all right.  After all, spring cleaning isn’t
the day of judgment."

"Edward Henry," said his mother, cutting in between them like a thin
blade, "I wish you wouldn’t be blasphemous.  London’s London, and
Bursley’s Bursley."  She had finished.

"It’s quite out of the question for me to come to-morrow, dear.  I must
have notice.  I really must."

And Edward Henry saw with alarm that Nellie had made up her mind, and
that the flattered calm pleasure in his suggestion had faded from her
face.

"Oh, dash these domesticated women!" he thought, and shortly afterwards
departed, brooding, to the offices of the Thrift Club.



                                 VIII.


He timed his return with exactitude, and, going straight up-stairs to
the chamber known indifferently as "Maisie’s room" or "nurse’s room,"
sure enough he found the three children there alone!  They were fed,
washed, night-gowned, and even dressing-gowned; and this was the hour
when, while Nurse repaired the consequences of their revolutionary
conduct in the bathroom and other places, they were left to themselves.
Robert lay on the hearth-rug, the insteps of his soft, pink feet rubbing
idly against the pile of the rug, his elbows digging into the pile, his
chin on his fists, and a book perpendicularly beneath his eyes.  Ralph,
careless adventurer rather than student, had climbed to the glittering
brass rail of Maisie’s new bedstead, and was thereon imitating a
recently seen circus performance.  Maisie, in the bed according to
regulation, and lying on the flat of her back, was singing nonchalantly
to the ceiling. Carlo, unaware that at that moment he might have been a
buried corpse but for the benignancy of Providence in his behalf, was
feeling sympathetic towards himself because he was slightly bored.

"Hello, kids!" Edward Henry greeted them. As he had seen them before
midday dinner, the more formal ceremonies of salutation after absence,
so hateful to the Five Towns temperament, were happily over and done
with.

Robert turned his head slightly, inspected his father with a judicial
detachment that hardly escaped the inimical, and then resumed his book.

("No one would think," said Edward Henry to himself, "that the person
who has just entered this room is the most enterprising and enlightened
of West End theatrical managers.")

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

"It isn’t a wire rope," said Robert from the hearth-rug, without
stirring.  "It’s a brass rail."

"Yes, it is a wire rope, because I can make it bend," Ralph retorted,
bumping down on the thing. "Anyhow, it’s going to be a wire rope."

Maisie simply stuck several fingers into her mouth, shifted to one side,
and smiled at her father in a style of heavenly and mischievous
flirtatiousness.

"Well, Robert, what are you reading?" Edward Henry inquired in his best
fatherly manner, half authoritative and half humorous, while he formed
part of the staff of Ralph’s circus.

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

Edward Henry, knowing that the discipline of filial politeness must be
maintained, said: "’Learning my spellings’--what?"

"Learning my spellings, Father," Robert consented to say, but with a
savage air of giving way to the unreasonable demands of affected fools.
Why indeed should it be necessary in conversation always to end one’s
sentence with the name or title of the person addressed?

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

"When?" the boy demanded cautiously.  He still did not move, but his
ears seemed to prick up.

"To-morrow?"

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

"No?  Why not?"

"Because there’s a spellings examination on Friday, and I’m going to be
top boy."

It was a fact that the infant (whose programmes were always somehow
arranged in advance, and were in his mind absolutely unalterable) could
spell the most obstreperous words.  Quite conceivably he could spell
better than his father, who still showed an occasional tendency to write
"separate" with three e’s and only one a.

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

"I know," said Robert negligently.

"What’s the population of London?"

"I don’t know," said Robert with curtness, though he added after a
pause: "But I can spell population--p-o-p-u-l-a-t-i-o-n."

"_I’ll_ come to London, Father, if you’ll have me," said Ralph, grinning
good-naturedly.

"Will you!" said his father.

"Fahver," asked Maisie, wriggling, "have you brought me a doll?"

"I’m afraid I haven’t."

"Mother said p’r’aps you would."

It was true, there had been talk of a doll; he had forgotten it.

"I tell you what I’ll do," said Edward Henry, "I’ll take you to London,
and you can choose a doll in London.  You never saw such dolls as there
are in London--talking dolls that shut and open their eyes and say Papa
and Mamma, and all their clothes take off and on."

"Do they say ’Father?’" growled Robert.

"No, they don’t," said Edward Henry.

"Why don’t they?" growled Robert.

"When will you take me?" Maisie almost squealed.

"To-morrow."

"Certain sure, Father?"

"Yes."

"You promise, Father?"

"Of course I promise."

Robert at length stood up to judge for himself this strange and
agitating caprice of his father’s for taking Maisie to London.  He saw
that, despite spellings, it would never do to let Maisie alone go. He
was about to put his father through a cross-examination, but Edward
Henry dropped Ralph, who had been climbing up him as up a
telegraph-pole, on to the bed and went over to the window, nervously,
and tapped thereon.

Carlo followed him, wagging an untidy tail.

"Hello, Trent!" murmured Edward Henry, stooping and patting the dog.

Ralph exploded into loud laughter.

"Father’s called Carlo ’Trent,’" he roared. "Father, have you forgotten
his name’s Carlo?"  It was one of the greatest jokes that Ralph had
heard for a long time.

Then Nellie hurried into the room, and Edward Henry, with a "Mustn’t be
late for tea," as hurriedly left it.

Three minutes later, while he was bent over the lavatory basin, someone
burst into the bathroom. He lifted a soapy face.

It was Nellie, with disturbed features.

"What’s this about your positively promising to take Maisie to London
to-morrow to choose a doll?"

"I’ll take ’em all," he replied with absurd levity. "And you too!"

"But really--" she pouted, indicating that he must not carry the
ridiculous too far.

"Look here, d--n it," he said impulsively, "I _want_ you to come.  And I
want you to come to-morrow. I knew it was the confounded infants you
wouldn’t leave.  You don’t mean to tell me you can’t arrange it--a woman
like you!"

She hesitated.

"And what am I to do with three children in a London hotel?"

"Take Nurse, naturally."

"Take Nurse?" she cried.

He imitated her with a grotesque exaggeration, yelling loudly, "Take
Nurse?"  Then he planted a soap-sud on her fresh cheek.

She wiped it off carefully and smacked his arm. The next moment she was
gone, having left the door open.

"He _wants_ me to go to London to-morrow," he could hear her saying to
his mother on the landing.

"Confound it!" he thought.  "Didn’t she know that at dinner-time?"

"Bless us!"  His mother’s voice.

"And take the children--and Nurse!" his wife continued in a tone to
convey the fact that she was just as much disturbed as her mother-in-law
could possibly be by the eccentricities of the male.

"He’s his father all over, that lad is!" said his mother strangely.

And Edward Henry was impressed by these words, for not once in seven
years did his mother mention his father.

Tea was an exciting meal.

"You’d better come too, Mother," said Edward Henry audaciously.  "We’ll
shut the house up."

"I come to no London," said she.

"Well, then, you can use the motor as much as you like while we’re
away."

"I go about gallivanting in no motor," said his mother.  "It’ll take me
all my time to get this house straight against you come back."

"I haven’t a _thing_ to go in!" said Nellie with a martyr’s sigh.

After all (he reflected), though domesticated, she was a woman.

He went to bed early.  It seemed to him that his wife, his mother, and
the nurse were active and whispering up and down the house till the very
middle of the night.  He arose not late, but they were all three afoot
before him, active and whispering.



                                  IX.


He found out on the morning after the highly complex transaction of
getting his family from Bursley to London that London held more problems
for him than ever.  He was now not merely the proprietor of a theatre
approaching completion, but really a theatrical manager with a play to
produce, artistes to engage, and the public to attract.  He had made two
appointments for that morning at the Majestic (he was not at the Grand
Babylon, because his wife had once stayed with him at the Majestic, and
he did not want to add to his anxieties the business of accustoming her
to a new and costlier luxury): one appointment at nine with Marrier, and
the other at ten with Nellie, family, and Nurse.  He had expected to get
rid of Marrier before ten.

Among the exciting mail which Marrier had collected for him from the
Grand Babylon and elsewhere was the following letter:


_Buckingham Palace Hotel._

DEAR FRIEND: We are all so proud of you.  I should like some time to
finish our interrupted conversation.  Will you come and have lunch with
me one day here at 1.30?  You needn’t write.  I know how busy you are.
Just telephone you are coming.  But don’t telephone between 12 and 1,
because at that time I _always_ take my constitutional in St. James’s
Park.

Yours sincerely,
         E. A.

"Well," he thought.  "That’s a bit thick, that is!  She’s stuck me up
with a dramatist I don’t believe in, and a play I don’t believe in, and
an actress I don’t believe in, and now she--"

Nevertheless, to a certain extent he was bluffing himself; for, as he
pretended to put Elsie April back into her place, he had disturbing and
delightful visions of her.  A clever creature!  Uncannily clever!
Wealthy!  Under thirty!  Broad-minded! No provincial prejudices! ... Her
voice, that always affected his spine!  Her delicious flattery! ... She
was no mean actress either!  And the multifariousness of her seductive
charm!  In fact, she was a regular woman of the world, such as you would
read about--if you did read! ... He was sitting with her again in the
obscurity of the discussion-room at the Azure Society’s establishment.
His heart was beating again.

Pooh! ...

A single wrench, and he ripped up the letter and cast it into one of the
red-lined waste-paper baskets with which the immense and rather shabby
writing-room of the Majestic was dotted.

Before he had finished dealing with Mr. Marrier’s queries and
suggestions--some ten thousand in all--the clock struck, and Nellie
tripped into the room.  She was in black silk, with hints here and there
of gold chains.  As she had explained, she had nothing to wear, and was
therefore obliged to fall back on the final resource of every woman in
her state.  For in this connection "nothing to wear" signified "nothing
except my black silk"--at any rate, in the Five Towns.

"Mr. Marrier--my wife.  Nellie, this is Mr. Marrier."

Mr. Marrier was profuse: no other word would describe his demeanour.
Nellie had the timidity of a young girl.  Indeed, she looked quite
youthful, despite the aging influences of black silk.

"So that’s your Mr. Marrier!  I understood from you he was a clerk!"
said Nellie tartly, suddenly retransformed into the shrewd matron as
soon as Mr. Marrier had profusely gone.  She had conceived Marrier as a
sort of Penkethman.  Edward Henry had hoped to avoid this interview.

He shrugged his shoulders in answer to his wife’s remark.

"Well," he said, "where are the kids?"

"Waiting in the lounge with Nurse, as you said to be."  Her mien
delicately informed him that while in London his caprices would be her
law, which she would obey without seeking to comprehend.

"Well," he went on, "I expect they’d like the parks as well as anything.
Suppose we take ’em and show ’em one of the parks?  Shall we?  Besides,
they must have fresh air."

"All right," Nellie agreed.  "But how far will it be?"

"Oh," said Edward Henry, "we’ll crowd into a taxi!"

They crowded into a taxi, and the children found their father in high
spirits.  Maisie mentioned the doll.  In a minute the taxi had stopped
in front of a toy-shop surpassing dreams, and they invaded the toy-shop
like an army.  When they emerged, after a considerable interval, Nurse
was carrying an enormous doll, and Nellie was carrying Maisie, and Ralph
was lovingly stroking the doll’s real shoes.  Robert kept a profound
silence--a silence which had begun in the train.

"You haven’t got much to say, Robert," his father remarked when the taxi
set off again.

"I know," said Robert gruffly.  Among other things, he resented his best
clothes on a week-day.

"What do you think of London?"

"I don’t know," said Robert.

His eyes never left the window of the taxi.

Then they visited the theatre--a very fatiguing enterprise, and also,
for Edward Henry, a very nervous one.  He was as awkward in displaying
that inchoate theatre as a newly-made father with his first-born.  Pride
and shame fought for dominion over him.  Nellie was full of laudations.
Ralph enjoyed the ladders.

"I say," said Nellie, apprehensive for Maisie, on the pavement, "this
child’s exhausted already.  How big’s this park of yours?  Because
neither Nurse nor I can carry her very far."

"We’ll buy a pram," said Edward Henry.  He was staring at a newspaper
placard which said: "Isabel Joy on the war-path again.  Will she win?"

"But--"

"Oh, yes, we’ll buy a pram!  Driver--"

"A pram isn’t enough.  You’ll want coverings for her, in this wind."

"Well, we’ll buy the necessary number of eiderdowns and blankets, then,"
said Edward Henry. "Driver--"

A tremendous business!  For, in addition to making the purchases, he had
to feed his flock in an A-B-C shop, where among the unoccupied
waitresses Maisie and her talkative winking doll enjoyed a triumph.
Still, there was plenty of time.

At a quarter-past twelve he was displaying the varied landscape beauties
of the park to his family. Ralph insisted on going to the bridge over
the lake, and Robert silently backed him.  And therefore the entire
party went.  But Maisie was afraid of the water, and cried.  Now, the
worst thing about Maisie was that when once she had begun to cry it was
very difficult to stop her.  Even the most remarkable dolls were
powerless to appease her distress.

"Give me the confounded pram, Nurse," said Edward Henry, "I’ll cure
her."

But he did not cure her.  However, he had to stick grimly to the
perambulator.  Nellie tripped primly in black silk on one side of it.
Nurse had the wayward Ralph by the hand.  And Robert, taciturn, stalked
alone, adding up London and making a very small total of it.

Suddenly Edward Henry halted the perambulator and, stepping away from
it, raised his hat.  An excessively elegant young woman leading a
Pekinese by a silver chain stopped as if smitten by a magic dart and
held spellbound.

"How do you do, Miss April?" said Edward Henry loudly.  "I was hoping to
meet you.  This is my wife.  Nellie, this is Miss April."  Nellie bowed
stiffly in her black silk.  Naught of the fresh maiden about her now!
And it has to be said that Elsie April, in all her young and radiant
splendour and woman-of-the-worldliness, was equally stiff. "And there
are my two boys.  And this is my little girl in the pram."

Maisie screamed, and pushed an expensive doll out of the perambulator.
Edward Henry saved it by its boot as it fell.

"And this is her doll.  And this is Nurse," he finished.  "Fine breezy
morning, isn’t it?"

In due course the processions moved on.

"Well, that’s done!" Edward Henry muttered to himself, and sighed.




                               CHAPTER IX

                            THE FIRST NIGHT

                                   I.

It was upon an evening in June--and a fine evening, full of the
exquisite melancholy of summer in a city--that Edward Henry stood before
a window, drumming thereon as he had once, a less experienced man with
hair slightly less gray, drummed on the table of the mighty and arrogant
Slosson.  The window was the window of the managerial room of the Regent
Theatre.  And he could scarcely believe it, he could scarcely believe
that he was not in a dream, for the room was papered, carpeted and
otherwise furnished.  Only its electric light fittings were somewhat
hasty and provisional, and the white ceiling showed a hole and a bunch
of wires, like the nerves of a hollow tooth, whence one of Edward
Henry’s favourite chandeliers would ultimately depend.

The whole of the theatre was at least as far advanced toward completion
as that room.  A great deal of it was more advanced; for instance the
auditorium, foyer, and bars, which were utterly finished, so far as
anything ever is finished in a changing world.  Wonders, marvels, and
miracles had been accomplished.  Mr. Alloyd, in the stress of the job,
had even ceased to bring the Russian ballet into his conversations.  Mr.
Alloyd, despite a growing tendency to prove to Edward Henry by authentic
anecdote about midnight his general proposition that women as a sex
treated him with shameful unfairness, had gained the high esteem of
Edward Henry as an architect.  He had fulfilled his word about those
properties of the auditorium which had to do with hearing and
seeing--in-so-much that the auditorium was indeed unique in London.  And
he had taken care that the clerk of the Works took care that the builder
did not give up heart in the race with time.

Moreover he had maintained the peace with the terrible London County
Council, all of whose inspecting departments seemed to have secretly
decided that the Regent Theatre should be opened, not in June as Edward
Henry had decided but at some vague future date toward the middle of the
century.  Months earlier Edward Henry had ordained and announced that
the Regent Theatre should be inaugurated on a given date in June, at the
full height of splendour of the London season, and he had astounded the
theatrical world by adhering through thick and thin to that date, and
had thereby intensified his reputation as an eccentric; for the oldest
inhabitant of that world could not recall a case in which the opening of
a new theatre had not been promised for at least three widely different
dates.

Edward Henry had now arrived at the eve of the date, and if he had
arrived there in comparative safety, with a reasonable prospect of
avoiding complete shame and disaster, he felt and he admitted that the
credit was due as much to Mr. Alloyd as to himself.  Which only
confirmed an early impression of his that architects were queer
people--rather like artists and poets in some ways, but with a basis of
bricks and mortar to them.

His own share in the enterprise of the Regent had in theory been
confined to engaging the right people for the right tasks and
situations; and to signing checks.  He had depended chiefly upon Mr.
Marrier, who, growing more radiant every day, had gradually developed
into a sort of chubby Napoleon, taking an immense delight in detail and
in choosing minor hands at round-sum salaries on the spur of the moment.
Mr. Marrier refused no call upon his energy.  He was helping Carlo Trent
in the production and stage-management of the play.  He dried the tears
of girlish neophytes at rehearsals. He helped to number the stalls.  He
showed a passionate interest in the tessellated pavement of the
entrance.  He taught the managerial typewriting girl how to make
afternoon tea.  He went to Hitchin to find a mediæval chair required for
the third act, and found it.  In a word he was fully equal to the post
of acting manager.  He managed!  He managed everything and everybody
except Edward Henry, and except the press-agent, a functionary whose
conviction of his own indispensability and importance was so sincere
that even Marrier shared it, and left him alone in his Bismarckian
operations. The press-agent, who sang in musical comedy chorus at night,
knew that if the Regent Theatre succeeded, it would be his doing and his
alone.

And yet Edward Henry, though he had delegated everything, had yet found
a vast amount of work to do; and was thereby exhausted.  That was why he
was drumming on the pane.  That was why he was conscious of a foolish
desire to shove his fist through the pane.  During the afternoon he had
had two scenes with two representatives of the Libraries (so called
because they deal in theatre-tickets and not in books) who had declined
to take up any of his tickets in advance.  He had commenced an action
against a firm of bill posters.  He had settled an incipient strike in
the "limes" department, originated by Mr. Cosmo Clark’s views about
lighting.  He had dictated answers to seventy-nine letters of complaint
from unknown people concerning the supply of free seats for the first
night.  He had responded in the negative to a request from a newspaper
critic who, on the score that he was deaf, wanted a copy of the play.
He had replied finally to an official of the County Council about the
smoke trap over the stage. He had replied finally to another official of
the County Council about the electric sign.  He had attended to a new
curiosity on the part of another official of the County Council about
the iron curtain. And he had been almost rude to still another official
of the County Council about the wiring of the electric light in the
dressing-rooms.  He had been unmistakably and pleasurably rude in
writing to Slossons about their criticisms of the lock on the door of
Lord Woldo’s private entrance to the theatre. Also he had arranged with
the representative of the Chief Commissioner of Police concerning the
carriage regulations for "setting-down and taking-up."

And he had indeed had more than enough.  His nerves, though he did not
know it, and would have scorned the imputation, were slowly giving way.
Hence, really, the danger to the pane!  Through the pane, in the dying
light he could see a cross-section of Shaftesbury Avenue, and an aged
newspaper lad leaning against a lamp-post and displaying a poster which
spoke of Isabel Joy.  Isabel Joy yet again!  That little fact of itself
contributed to his exasperation.  He thought, considering the importance
of the Regent Theatre and the salary he was paying to his press-agent,
that the newspapers ought to occupy their pages solely with the
metropolitan affairs of Edward Henry Machin.  But the wretched Isabel
had, as it were, got London by the throat. She had reached Chicago from
the West, on her triumphant way home, and had there contrived to be
arrested, according to boast, but she was experiencing much more
difficulty in emerging from the Chicago prison than in entering it.  And
the question was now becoming acute whether the emissary of the militant
Suffragettes would arrive back in London within the specified period of
a hundred days. Naturally, London was holding its breath.  London will
keep calm during moderate crises--such as a national strike or the agony
of the House of Lords--but when the supreme excitation is achieved
London knows how to let itself go.

"If you please, Mr. Machin--"

He turned.  It was his typewriter, Miss Lindop, a young girl of some
thirty-five years, holding a tea-tray.

"But I’ve had my tea once!" he snapped.

"But you’ve not had your dinner, sir, and it’s half-past eight!" she
pleaded.

He had known this girl for less than a month and he paid her fewer
shillings a week than the years of her age, and yet somehow she had
assumed a worshipping charge of him, based on the idea that he was
incapable of taking care of himself.  To look at her appealing eyes one
might have thought that she would have died to insure his welfare.

"And they want to see you about the linoleum for the gallery stairs,"
she added timidly.  "The County Council man says it must be taken up."

The linoleum for the gallery stairs!  Something snapped in him.  He
almost walked right through the young woman and the tea-tray.

"I’ll linoleum them!" he bitterly exclaimed, and disappeared.



                                  II.


Having duly "linoleumed them," or rather having very annoyingly quite
failed to "linoleum them," Edward Henry continued his way up the
right-hand gallery staircase and reached the auditorium, where to his
astonishment a good deal of electricity, at one penny three farthings a
unit, was blazing. Every seat in the narrow and high-pitched gallery,
where at the sides the knees of one spectator would be on a level with
the picture-hat of the spectator in the row beneath, had a perfect and
entire view of the proscenium opening.  And Edward Henry now proved this
unprecedented fact by climbing to the topmost corner seat and therefrom
surveying the scene of which he was monarch. The boxes were swathed in
their new white dust sheets; and likewise the higgledy-piggledy stalls,
not as yet screwed down to the floor, save three or four stalls in the
middle of the front row, from which the sheet had been removed.  On one
of these seats, far off though it was, he could descry a paper
bag,--probably containing sandwiches,--and on another a pair of gloves
and a walking-stick. Several alert ladies with sketchbooks walked
uneasily about in the aisles.  The orchestra was hidden in the well
provided for it, and apparently murmuring in its sleep.  The magnificent
drop-curtain, designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A., concealed the
stage.

Suddenly Mr. Marrier and Carlo Trent appeared through the iron door that
gave communication--to initiates--between the wings and the auditorium;
they sat down in the stalls.  And the curtain rose with a violent swish,
and disclosed the first "set" of "The Orient Pearl."

"What about that amber, Cosmo?" Mr. Marrier cried thickly, after a
pause, his mouth occupied with sandwich.

"There you are!" came the reply.

"Right!" said Mr. Marrier.  "Strike!"

"Don’t strike!" contradicted Carlo Trent.

"Strike, I tell you!  We must get on with the second act."  The voices
resounded queerly in the empty theatre.

The stage was invaded by scene shifters before the curtain could descend
again.

Edward Henry heard a tripping step behind him. It was the faithful
typewriting girl.

"I say," he said.  "Do you mind telling me what’s going on here?  It’s
true that in the rush of more important business I’d almost forgotten
that a theatre is a place where they perform plays."

"It’s the dress-rehearsal, Mr. Machin," said the woman, startled and
apologetic.

"But the dress-rehearsal was fixed for three o’clock," said he.  "It
must have been finished three hours ago."

"I think they’ve only just done the first act," the woman breathed.  "I
know they didn’t begin till seven.  Oh!  Mr. Machin, of course it’s no
affair of mine, but I’ve worked in a good many theatres, and I do think
it’s such a mistake to have the dress-rehearsal quite private.  If you
get a hundred or so people in the stalls, then it’s an audience, and
there’s much less delay and everything goes much better.  But when it’s
private a dress-rehearsal is just like any other rehearsal."

"Only more so, perhaps," said Edward Henry, smiling.

He saw that he had made her happy; but he saw also that he had given her
empire over him.

"I’ve got your tea here," she said, rather like a hospital nurse now.
"Won’t you drink it?"

"I’ll drink it if it’s not stewed," he muttered.

"Oh!" she protested.  "Of course it isn’t!  I poured it off the leaves
into another teapot before I brought it up."

She went behind the barrier, and reappeared balancing a cup of tea with
a slice of sultana cake edged on the saucer.  And as she handed it to
him--the sustenance of rehearsals--she gazed at him and he could almost
hear her eyes saying: "You poor thing!"

There was nothing that he hated so much as to be pitied.

"You go home!" he commanded.

"Oh, but--"

"You go home!  See?"  He paused, threatening. "If you don’t clear out on
the tick, I’ll chuck this cup and saucer down into the stalls."

Horrified, she vanished.

He sighed his relief.

After some time, the leader of the orchestra climbed into his chair, and
the orchestra began to play, and the curtain went up again, on the
second act of the masterpiece in hexameters.  The new scenery, which
Edward Henry had with extraordinary courage insisted on Saracen
Givington substituting for the original incomprehensibilities displayed
at the Azure Society’s performance, rather pleased him.  Its colouring
was agreeable, and it did resemble something definite.  You could,
though perhaps not easily, tell what it was meant to represent. The play
proceeded, and the general effect was surprisingly pleasant to Edward
Henry.  And then Rose Euclid as Haidee came on for the great scene of
the act.  From the distance of the gallery she looked quite passably
youthful, and beyond question she had a dominating presence in her
resplendent costume.  She was incomparably and amazingly better than she
had been at the few previous rehearsals which Edward Henry had been
unfortunate enough to witness.  She even reminded him of his earliest
entrancing vision of her.

"Some people may _like_ this!" he admitted, with a gleam of optimism.
Hitherto, for weeks past, he had gone forward with his preparations in
the most frigid and convinced pessimism.  It seemed to him that he had
become involved in a vast piece of machinery, and that nothing short of
blowing the theatre up with dynamite would bring the cranks and pistons
to a stop.  And yet it seemed to him also that everything was unreal,
that the contracts he signed were unreal, and the proofs he passed, and
the posters he saw on the walls of London, and the advertisements in the
newspapers.  Only the checks he drew had the air of being real.  And
now, in a magic flash, after a few moments gazing at the stage, he saw
all differently.  He scented triumph from afar off, as one sniffs the
tang of the sea.  On the morrow he had to meet Nellie at Euston, and he
had shrunk from meeting her, with her terrible remorseless, provincial,
untheatrical common sense; but now, in another magic flash, he envisaged
the meeting with a cock-a-doodle-doo of hope. Strange!  He admitted it
was strange.

And then he failed to hear several words spoken by Rose Euclid.  And
then a few more.  As the emotion of the scene grew, the proportion of
her words audible in the gallery diminished.  Until she became, for him,
totally inarticulate, raving away there and struggling in a cocoon of
hexameters.

Despair seized him.  His nervous system, every separate nerve of it, was
on the rack once more.

He stood up in a sort of paroxysm and called loudly across the vast
intervening space:

"Speak more distinctly, please."

A fearful silence fell upon the whole theatre. The rehearsal stopped.
The building itself seemed to be staggered.  Somebody had actually
demanded that words should be uttered articulately!

Mr. Marrier turned toward the intruder, as one determined to put an end
to such singularities.

"Who’s up theyah?"

"I am," said Edward Henry.  "And I want it to be clearly understood in
my theatre that the first thing an actor has to do is to make himself
heard. I daresay I’m devilish odd, but that’s how I look at it."

"Whom do you mean, Mr. Machin?" asked Marrier in a different tone.

"I mean Miss Euclid of course.  Here I’ve spent Heaven knows how much on
the acoustics of this theatre, and I can’t make out a word she says. I
can hear all the others.  And this is the dress-rehearsal!"

"You must remember you’re in the gallery," said Mr. Marrier firmly.

"And what if I am!  I’m not giving gallery seats away to-morrow night.
It’s true I’m giving half the stalls away, but the gallery will be paid
for."

Another silence.

Said Rose Euclid sharply, and Edward Henry caught every word with the
most perfect distinctness:

"I’m sick and tired of people saying they can’t make out what I say!
They actually write me letters about it!  Why _should_ people make out
what I say?"

She quitted the stage.

Another silence....

"Ring down the curtain," said Mr. Marrier in a thrilled voice.



                                  III.


Shortly afterward Mr. Marrier came into the managerial office, lit up
now, where Edward Henry was dictating to his typewriter and hospital
nurse, who, having been caught in hat and jacket on the threshold, had
been brought back and was tapping his words direct on to the machine. It
was a remarkable fact that the sole proprietor of the Regent Theatre was
now in high spirits and good-humour.

"Well, Marrier, my boy," he saluted the acting manager, "how are you
getting on with that rehearsal?"

"Well, sir," said Mr. Marrier, "I’m not getting on with it.  Miss Euclid
refuses absolutely to proceed.  She’s in her dressing-room."

"But why?" enquired Edward Henry with bland surprise.  "Doesn’t she
_want_ to be heard by her gallery-boys?"

Mr. Marrier showed a feeble smile.

"She hasn’t been spoken to like that for thirty years," said he.

"But don’t you agree with me?" asked Edward Henry.

"Yes," said Marrier, "I _agree_ with you--"

"And doesn’t your friend Carlo want his precious hexameters to be
heard?"

"We baoth agree with you," said Marrier. "The fact is, we’ve done all we
could, but it’s no use.  She’s splendid; only--"  He paused.

"Only you can’t make out ten per cent. of what she says," Edward Henry
finished for him.  "Well, I’ve got no use for that in my theatre."  He
found a singular pleasure in emphasising the phrase, "my theatre."

"That’s all very well," said Marrier.  "But what are you going to _do_
about it?  I’ve tried everything. _You’ve_ come in and burst up the
entire show, if you’ll forgive my saying saoh!"

"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 knaow."

"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 subject or to proceed with the rehearsal. _Hinc
illæ lachrymæ!_" ... "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 toward 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 who boast in the universe 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 sublet to a tenant who also was 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.  At the end
of 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 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 recognised 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.

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 recognised 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 was now 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 togethah.  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 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 see only 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 Wrissel."

"What’s Wrissel got to do with it?"

"She means to marry him."

"Elsie April means to marry Wrissel?"

"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.  Furthermore, 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 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 had 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
the 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.

[Illustration: Theatrical advertisement]

Unreal!  Fantastic!  Was this he, Edward Henry?  Could it be still 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 the 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 enquired 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 one 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 forever 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 on 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 farther 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 toward 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 Sach’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 in 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 words 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 good 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 rigours 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, medieval 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 forever bending his
head toward 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, jewelry
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
forever 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
upward 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 Fifth."

"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 are 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 and his English
protégé had been received at Smile’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.  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 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 licenced 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 toward 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 organiser.



                                  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, Tokio, 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, the
Azure Society.  Do you know of 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 you 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 England 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 fourpence 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 enquired, 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
Sach’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 aboard 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 press-man 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 famous and the least
visible person on the ship.  He remembered that she had said: "You won’t
see anything of me."

It was easy to ascertain the number of her stateroom--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 the sea level to the busy 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 ever set
eyes on a steerage passenger; with all the conceit natural to the
occupant of a costly stateroom, 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 apologised.



                                   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 on 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 toward 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 grace the purser’s
shoulder.  With the celerity of a sprinter the man of authority from
Durham disappeared from the ground floor and was immediately seen in the
gallery. Accounts differed, afterward, 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
stateroom.

"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
despatch 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 low 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
these 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 saved most situations,
namely, public opinion.  When the saloon clearly realised 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 people.  Edward Henry would not lose sight of his
priceless charge, but he sent Marrier 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 the 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
instructions, called another rehearsal for the afternoon and effected a
saving of nearly half Isabel Joy’s fantastic salary.  Then he 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
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 baptised 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 Doctor 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.

"Colonitis."

"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 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 toward 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
Doctor 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 toward him, and in his deliberate, judicial, disdainful, childish
voice said to him:

"Isn’t Father a funny man?"




                                THE END






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_The Autobiography of a Woman’s Heart._

Price $1.20 Net

THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA presents the woman of genius--who belongs neither
to the middle-class nor to any other class, but simply to her genius,
and to the passions of her own heart.

The book is a woman’s soul confession written in the first person.  In
sheer audacity of purpose it outstrips all Arnold Bennett’s other novels
with the exception of THE OLD WIVES’ TALE. In the first place, it is an
intimate record of a woman’s secret psychology; in the second, the woman
is a woman of genius, which necessitates a continual flow of brilliancy
on the author’s part; in the third, it is a novel written in the French
manner by an Englishman.

Carlotta is an extraordinary creation--a woman apart.  She stands among
the rebels of fiction and biography--the people who have dared to be
what they are.  The motive of her whole life is self-fulfillment as she
knows it, even though this means the defiance of laws.

Everything contributes to the last great climax entitled _Victory_.




                  ARNOLD BENNETT: POCKET PHILOSOPHIES



HOW TO LIVE ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY:

A Study in Time Expenditure.

_On the Conservation of Time._

Price $0.50 Net

In a series of delightfully personal essays Arnold Bennett discusses the
problem of how to attain happiness through living the intenser life.

When he deliberately assumes the role of philosopher and friend, his
wise and tolerant teachings come to us vivid with his strenuous
personality.  In the essay medium his strange faculty for combining
wisdom with humor works unfettered.



MENTAL EFFICIENCY:

_On the Conservation of the Mind._

Price $0.75 Net

Everybody desires to be efficient.  But nearly everybody mistakenly
supposes that this is a natural characteristic.  That it is not, Mr.
Bennett shows in his "Mental Efficiency."  It is the product of
concentration which in turn is the product of will-power.  But
will-power can be developed by concentration and Mr. Bennett shows us
how to do it.



THE HUMAN MACHINE:

_On the Conservation of Energy._

Price $0.75 Net

With fine inspiring optimism, amid flashes of wit and gusts of laughter,
Arnold Bennett declares to everyone how he may make the best of himself.



LITERARY TASTE: How to Form It.

_On the Conservation of Pleasure._

Price $0.75 Net

It is Arnold Bennett’s conviction that life ought to be for everybody an
affair of joy.  For him literature has proved the royal road to
happiness: he is eager to point the way.



                  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, Publishers




                           BY ARNOLD BENNETT


NOVELS

The Old Wives’ Tale
Helen with the High Hand
The Matador of the Five Towns
The Book of Carlotta
Buried Alive
A Great Man
Leonora
Whom God Hath Joined
A Man from the North
Anna of the Five Towns
The Glimpse



POCKET PHILOSOPHIES

How to Live on 24 Hours A Day
The Human Machine
Literary Taste
Mental Efficiency



PLAYS

Cupid and Commonsense
What the Public Wants
Polite Farces
Milestones
The Honeymoon



MISCELLANEOUS

The Truth About an Author
The Feast of St. Friend


                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
                                NEW YORK