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 aboutmytea? 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 shehasn'tbeen 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'smylist!" 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 dramaticsoiréeof 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'twantto 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 wantedmeurgently! 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 theMinnetonka.""TheMinnetonka!" 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 VIIIDEALING WITH ELSIEI.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 dramaticsoiréeof 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 dramaticsoiréeof 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 theMinnetonka?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.
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 aboutmytea? 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 shehasn'tbeen 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'smylist!" 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 dramaticsoiréeof 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'twantto 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 wantedmeurgently! 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 theMinnetonka."
"TheMinnetonka!" 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 dramaticsoiréeof 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 dramaticsoiréeof 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 theMinnetonka?
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.