CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER IVENTRY INTO THE THEATRICAL WORLDIOnce, 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 his 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 tantalizing glimpses of the interior of a doll's drawing-room and of male and female dolls therein.He could only see, even partially, the inferior 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,[90]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,[91]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 point-blank 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 recognize 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[92]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 havelookedfamous. 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[93]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.[94]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 recognized 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 recognized even her face!"Did Mr. Bryany tell you that my two boys are coming up?" said she. "I[95]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 know 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."Youknow—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.IIWithin ten minutes, within less than ten minutes, Alderman Edward Henry Machin's supper-party at Wilkins's was so wonderfully changed[96]for the better that Edward Henry might have been excused for not recognizing 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.[97]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[98]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 twopences 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 artichokes.) With regard to the other two men, he was quite ready to believe that Carlo Trent was the world's greatest dramatic poet, and to admit the exceeding talent of Mr. Marrier as a theatrical manager.... In fact, unmistakable celebrities, one and all! He himself[99]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 apologize 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 breast-plate, especially when a broad purple eyeglass 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[100]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 Harrier. "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 doyouthink 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[101]that sort of thing!" with an air of pushing violently away from him everything that the phrase implied. The notion of baptizing 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[102]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.""WhatisMr. Sachs'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 drahma 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'!"("Histheatre!" 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'tyou?" 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 eyeglasses dangled in front of him."Mr. Machin," said he with the utmost benevolence. "This is the most[103]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.[104]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."[105]Mr. Seven Sachs choked over his wine, and kept on choking.IIIMr.. 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 thecontretemps. 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."Isay," he emphasized, "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 howcanwe 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[106]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:"'Hernew theatre'—now! It was 'his' a few minutes back!... 'The well-known Midlands 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 the 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 Theatre?" Rose questioned casually, without moving her eyes."Splendid!" cried Mr. Marrier from the telephone.[107]"It all depends whether there are enough mathematical students in London to fill the theatre 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 Shakspere.""I thought you were talking about poetry," said Edward Henry too hastily."And isn't Shakspere poetry?" Carlo Trent challenged."Well, I suppose if you put it in that way, heis!" Edward[108]Henry cautiously admitted, humbled. He was under the disadvantage of never having either seen or read "Shakspere." His sure instinct had always warned him against being drawn into "Shakspere.""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 Shakspere," she said in a[109]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 Shaksperean 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 to me!""And nothing on earth would induce me to let him have 'The Orient Pearl'!" Carlo Trent asseverated with equal passion. "He's lost that for ever!" 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[110]printed black, and the figures £4, 4s. 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[111]closed the door carefully, and drew theportièreacross it. Then he listened. No sound penetrated from the scene of the supper."Thereisa 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 daresay 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."[112]He waited. Then he heard Harrier'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:[113]"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 sofortunatewe 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 diplomatizing with actresses and poets all his life."A—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[114]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!"[115]

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 his 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 tantalizing glimpses of the interior of a doll's drawing-room and of male and female dolls therein.

He could only see, even partially, the inferior 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,[90]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,[91]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 point-blank 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 recognize 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[92]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 havelookedfamous. 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[93]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 recognized 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 recognized even her face!

"Did Mr. Bryany tell you that my two boys are coming up?" said she. "I[95]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 know 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.

"Youknow—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.

Within ten minutes, within less than ten minutes, Alderman Edward Henry Machin's supper-party at Wilkins's was so wonderfully changed[96]for the better that Edward Henry might have been excused for not recognizing 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[98]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 twopences 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 artichokes.) With regard to the other two men, he was quite ready to believe that Carlo Trent was the world's greatest dramatic poet, and to admit the exceeding talent of Mr. Marrier as a theatrical manager.... In fact, unmistakable celebrities, one and all! He himself[99]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 apologize 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 breast-plate, especially when a broad purple eyeglass 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[100]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 Harrier. "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 doyouthink 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[101]that sort of thing!" with an air of pushing violently away from him everything that the phrase implied. The notion of baptizing 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[102]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."

"WhatisMr. Sachs'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 drahma 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'!"

("Histheatre!" 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'tyou?" 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 eyeglasses dangled in front of him.

"Mr. Machin," said he with the utmost benevolence. "This is the most[103]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:

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:

"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.

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 thecontretemps. 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.

"Isay," he emphasized, "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 howcanwe 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[106]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:

"'Hernew theatre'—now! It was 'his' a few minutes back!... 'The well-known Midlands 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 the 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 Theatre?" 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 theatre 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 Shakspere."

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

"And isn't Shakspere poetry?" Carlo Trent challenged.

"Well, I suppose if you put it in that way, heis!" Edward[108]Henry cautiously admitted, humbled. He was under the disadvantage of never having either seen or read "Shakspere." His sure instinct had always warned him against being drawn into "Shakspere."

"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 Shakspere," she said in a[109]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 Shaksperean 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 to me!"

"And nothing on earth would induce me to let him have 'The Orient Pearl'!" Carlo Trent asseverated with equal passion. "He's lost that for ever!" 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[110]printed black, and the figures £4, 4s. 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[111]closed the door carefully, and drew theportièreacross it. Then he listened. No sound penetrated from the scene of the supper.

"Thereisa 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 daresay 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 Harrier'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 sofortunatewe 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 diplomatizing with actresses and poets all his life.

"A—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[114]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 VMR SACHS TALKSIIt 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[116]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. NowThe Daily Filmspecialized 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 theFilm. He had also, in the same vision, seen his mother conning the said issue, and the sardonic curve of her lips as she recognized 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 his bell, and two gentlemen-in-waiting arrived."Clear this table immediately!"The tone of the command startled everybody except the[117]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 this 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. "Dolet's see."[118]"The option must be taken up to-morrow. Good! That's clear. It came rather casual-like, but it's now clear. £4500 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 noughts 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,[119]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 business-like."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 £2250 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."[120]"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[121]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.[122]He fully agreed with me it was better that he should have a proper interest in the theatre.""Why of course!" cried Mr. Harrier, 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. "How-evah, 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 £2250 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:[123]"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 that 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.[124]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. "Whatisan 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 eyeglasses 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[125]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—£2250?" 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.[126]"Imight, 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 £2250 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.[127]"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[128]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 taxi-cabs 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."[129]"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 youweredoing 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[130]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 reallydothink 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's 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.[131]"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 hob-nobbing 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[132]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 victimized by the deceit of the telephone-call. Prior to the call they had assumed themselves to be deprived for ever of the benefits which association with Sir John Pilgrim could offer, and as a fact they were deprived for ever 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 quartet 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[133]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,[134]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 a talk with him myself," said Edward Henry."Oh, yes! He told me all about you.""ButInever 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.Iheard a good bit whenIwas 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 daresay you've heard—" began Mr. Seven Sachs, simultaneously.They were like two men who by inadvertence had attempted to pass[135]through a narrow doorway abreast. Edward Henry, as the host, drew back."I beg your pardon!" he apologized."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."[136]"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.[137]"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 Florance's stage-manager, and nearly as famous as Archibald himself. Well, Wunch sent for me upstairs 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 aprotége[138]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[139]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 justhadto 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 of 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[140]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-Niners.' 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 rattled 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.'[141]"However, I was too angry to stand for that sort of talk. I said to him:"'I daresay 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 HannibalCourier-Postwas 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[142]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, andhisname 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!"[143]"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's 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. Whydidyou 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![144]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 3 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!"

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[116]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. NowThe Daily Filmspecialized 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 theFilm. He had also, in the same vision, seen his mother conning the said issue, and the sardonic curve of her lips as she recognized 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 his bell, and two gentlemen-in-waiting arrived.

"Clear this table immediately!"

The tone of the command startled everybody except the[117]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 this 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. "Dolet's see."

"The option must be taken up to-morrow. Good! That's clear. It came rather casual-like, but it's now clear. £4500 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 noughts 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,[119]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 business-like.

"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 £2250 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[121]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.[122]He fully agreed with me it was better that he should have a proper interest in the theatre."

"Why of course!" cried Mr. Harrier, 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. "How-evah, 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 £2250 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 that 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.

"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. "Whatisan 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 eyeglasses 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[125]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—£2250?" 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.

"Imight, 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 £2250 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[128]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 taxi-cabs 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.

"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 youweredoing 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[130]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 reallydothink 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's 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 hob-nobbing 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[132]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 victimized by the deceit of the telephone-call. Prior to the call they had assumed themselves to be deprived for ever of the benefits which association with Sir John Pilgrim could offer, and as a fact they were deprived for ever 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 quartet 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[133]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,[134]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 a talk with him myself," said Edward Henry.

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

"ButInever 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.Iheard a good bit whenIwas 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.

"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 daresay you've heard—" began Mr. Seven Sachs, simultaneously.

They were like two men who by inadvertence had attempted to pass[135]through a narrow doorway abreast. Edward Henry, as the host, drew back.

"I beg your pardon!" he apologized.

"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 Florance's stage-manager, and nearly as famous as Archibald himself. Well, Wunch sent for me upstairs 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 aprotége[138]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[139]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 justhadto 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 of 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[140]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-Niners.' 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 rattled 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 daresay 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 HannibalCourier-Postwas 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[142]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, andhisname 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!"

"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's 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. Whydidyou 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![144]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 3 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!"

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