The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure

"You honestly think I could run a theatre?"

"You were born to run a theatre," said Seven Sachs.

Thrilled, Edward Henry responded:

"Then I'll write to those lawyer people, Slossons, and tell 'em I'll be around with the brass about eleven to-morrow."

Mr. Sachs rose. A clock had delicately chimed two.

"If ever you come to New York, and I can do anything for you-" said Mr. Sachs heartily.

"Thanks," said Edward Henry. They were shaking hands. "I say," Edward Henry went on, "there's one thing I want to ask you. Why didyou promise to back Rose Euclid and her friends? You must surely have known-" He threw up his hands.

Mr. Sachs answered:

"I'll be frank with you. It was her cousin that persuaded me into it-Elsie April."

"Elsie April? Who's she?"

"Oh! You must have seen them about together-her and Rose Euclid. They're nearly always together."

"I saw her in the restaurant here to-day with a rather jolly girl-blue hat."

"That's the one. As soon as you've made her acquaintance you'll understand what I mean," said Mr. Seven Sachs.

"Ah! But I'm not a bachelor like you," Edward Henry smiled archly.

"Well, you'll see when you meet her," said Mr. Sachs. Upon which enigmatic warning he departed, and was lost in the immense glittering nocturnal silence of Wilkins's.

Edward Henry sat down to write to Slossons by the three A.M. post. But as he wrote he kept saying to himself: "So Elsie April's her name, is it? And she actually persuaded Sachs-Sachs-to make a fool of himself!"

CHAPTER VI

LORD WOLDO AND LADY WOLDO

I

The next morning Joseph, having opened wide the window, informed his master that the weather was bright and sunny, and Edward Henry arose with just that pleasant degree of fatigue which persuades one that one is, if anything, rather more highly vitalised than usual. He sent for Mr. Bryany, as for a domestic animal, and Mr. Bryany, ceremoniously attired, was received by a sort of jolly king who happened to be trimming his beard in the royal bathroom, but who was too good-natured to keep Mr. Bryany waiting. It is remarkable how the habit of royalty, having once taken root, will flourish in the minds of quite unmonarchical persons. Edward Henry first enquired after the health of Mr. Seven Sachs, and then obtained from Mr. Bryany all remaining papers and trifles of information concerning the affair of the option. Whereupon Mr. Bryany, apparently much elated by the honour of an informal reception, effusively retired. And Edward Henry too was so elated, and his faith in life so renewed and invigorated that he said to himself:

"It might be worth while to shave my beard off after all!"

As in his electric brougham he drove along muddy and shining Piccadilly, he admitted that Joseph's account of the weather had been very accurate. The weather was magnificent; it presented the best features of summer combined with the salutary pungency of autumn. And flags were flying over the establishments of tobacconists, soothsayers, and insurance companies in Piccadilly. And the sense of empire was in the very air, like an intoxication. And there was no place like London. When, however, having run through Piccadilly into streets less superb, he reached the Majestic, it seemed to him that the Majestic was not a part of London, but a bit of the provinces surrounded by London. He was very disappointed with the Majestic, and took his letters from the clerk with careless condescension. In a few days the Majestic had sunk from being one of "London's huge caravanserais" to the level of a swollen Turk's Head. So fragile are reputations!

From the Majestic, Edward Henry drove back into the regions of Empire, between Piccadilly and Regent Street, and deigned to call upon his tailors. A morning suit which he had commanded being miraculously finished, he put it on, and was at once not only spectacularly but morally regenerated. The old suit, though it had cost five guineas in its time, looked a paltry and a dowdy thing as it lay, flung down anyhow, on one of Messrs. Quayther and Cuthering's cane chairs in the mirrored cubicle where baronets and even peers showed their braces to the benign Mr. Cuthering.

"I want to go to Piccadilly Circus now. Stop at the fountain," said Edward Henry to his chauffeur. He gave the order somewhat defiantly, because he was a little self-conscious in the new and gleaming suit, and because he had an absurd idea that the chauffeur might guess that he, a provincial from the Five Towns, was about to venture into West End theatrical enterprise, and sneer at him accordingly.

But the chauffeur merely touched his cap with an indifferent lofty gesture, as if to say:

"Be at ease. I have driven more persons more moonstruck even than you. Human eccentricity has long since ceased to surprise me."

The fountain in Piccadilly Circus was the gayest thing in London. It mingled the fresh tingling of water with the odour and flame of autumn blossoms and the variegated colours of shawled women who passed their lives on its margin engaged in the commerce of flowers. Edward Henry bought an aster from a fine, bold, red-cheeked, blowsy, dirty wench with a baby in her arms, and left some change for the baby. He was in a very tolerant and charitable mood, and could excuse the sins and the stupidity of all mankind. He reflected forgivingly that Rose Euclid and her friends had perhaps not displayed an abnormal fatuity in discussing the name of the theatre before they had got the lease of the site for it. Had not he himself bought all the option without having even seen the site? The fact was that he had had no leisure in his short royal career for such details as seeing the site. He was now about to make good the omission.

It is a fact that as he turned northward from Piccadilly Circus, to the right of the County Fire Office, in order to spy out the land upon which his theatre was to be built, he hesitated, under the delusion that all the passers-by were staring at him! He felt just as he might have felt had he been engaged upon some scheme nefarious. He even went back and pretended to examine the windows of the County Fire Office. Then, glancing self-consciously about, he discerned-not unnaturally-the words "Regent Street" on a sign.

"There you are!" he murmured with a thrill. "There you are! There's obviously only one name for that theatre-'The Regent.' It's close to Regent Street. No other theatre is called 'The Regent.' Nobody before ever had the idea of 'Regent' as a name for a theatre. 'Muses' indeed! … 'Intellectual!' … 'The Regent Theatre!' How well it comes off the tongue! It's a great name! It'll be the finest name of any theatre in London! And it took yours truly to think of it!"

Then he smiled privately at his own weakness… He too, like the despised Rose, was baptising the unborn! Still, he continued to dream of the theatre, and began to picture to himself the ideal theatre. He discovered that he had quite a number of startling ideas about theatre-construction, based on his own experience as a playgoer.

When, with new courage, he directed his feet towards the site, upon which he knew there was an old chapel known as Queen's Glasshouse Chapel, whose ownership had slipped from the nerveless hand of a dying sect of dissenters, he could not find the site, and he could not see the chapel. For an instant he was perturbed by a horrid suspicion that he had been victimised by a gang of swindlers posing as celebrated persons. Everything was possible in this world and century. None of the people who had appeared in the transaction had resembled his previous conceptions of such people! And confidence-thieves always operated in the grandest hotels! He immediately decided that if the sequel should prove him to be a simpleton and gull he would at any rate be a silent simpleton and gull. He would stoically bear the loss of two hundred pounds, and breathe no word of woe.

But then he remembered with relief that he had genuinely recognised both Rose Euclid and Seven Sachs; and also that Mr. Bryany, among other documents, had furnished him with a photograph of the chapel and surrounding property. The chapel therefore existed. He had a plan in his pocket. He now opened this plan and tried to consult it in the middle of the street, but his agitation was such that he could not make out on it which was north and which was south. After he had been nearly prostrated by a taxicab, a policeman came up to him and said with all the friendly disdain of a London policeman addressing a provincial:

"Safer to look at that on the pavement, sir!"

Edward Henry glanced up from the plan.

"I was trying to find the Queen's Glasshouse Chapel, Officer," said he. "Have you ever heard of it?" (In Bursley, members of the town council always flattered members of the force by addressing them as "Officer"; and Edward Henry knew exactly the effective intonation.)

"It was there, sir," said the policeman, less disdainful, pointing to a narrow hoarding behind which could be seen the back walls of high buildings in Shaftesbury Avenue. "They've just finished pulling it down."

"Thank you," said Edward Henry quietly, with a superb and successful effort to keep as much colour in his face as if the policeman had not dealt him a dizzying blow.

He then walked towards the hoarding, but could scarcely feel the ground under his feet. From a wide aperture in the palisades a cartful of earth was emerging; it creaked and shook as it was dragged by a labouring horse over loose planks into the roadway; a whip-cracking carter hovered on its flank. Edward Henry approached the aperture and gazed within. An elegant young man stood solitary inside the hoarding and stared at a razed expanse of land in whose furthest corner some navvies were digging a hole…

The site!

But what did this sinister destructive activity mean? Nobody was entitled to interfere with property on which he, Alderman Machin, held an unexpired option! But was it the site? He perused the plan again with more care. Yes, there could be no doubt that it was the site. His eye roved round, and he admitted the justice of the boast that an electric sign displayed at the southern front corner of the theatre would be visible from Piccadilly Circus, lower Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, etc. He then observed a large noticeboard, raised on posts above the hoardings, and read the following:

Site of the First New Thought Church to be opened next Spring. Subscriptions invited. Rollo Wrissell, Senior Trustee. Ralph Alloyd, Architect. Dicks and Pato, Builders

The name of Rollo Wrissell seemed familiar to him, and after a few moments' searching he recalled that Rollo Wrissell was one of the trustees and executors of the late Lord Woldo, the other being the widow, and the mother of the new Lord Woldo. In addition to the lettering, the notice-board held a graphic representation of the First New Thought Church as it would be when completed.

"Well," said Edward Henry, not perhaps unjustifiably, "this really is a bit thick! Here I've got an option on a plot of land for building a theatre, and somebody else has taken it to put up a church!"

He ventured inside the hoarding, and, addressing the elegant young man, asked:

"You got anything to do with this, Mister?"

"Well," said the young man, smiling humorously, "I'm the architect. It's true that nobody ever pays any attention to an architect in these days."

"Oh! You're Mr. Alloyd?"

"I am."

Mr. Alloyd had black hair, intensely black, changeful eyes, and the expressive mouth of an actor.

"I thought they were going to build a theatre here," said Edward Henry.

"I wish they had been!" said Mr. Alloyd. "I'd just like to design a theatre! But of course I shall never get the chance."

"Why not?"

"I know I sha'n't," Mr. Alloyd insisted with gloomy disgust. "Only obtained this job by sheer accident! … You got any ideas about theatres?"

"Well, I have," said Edward Henry.

Mr. Alloyd turned on him with a sardonic and half-benevolent gleam.

"And what are your ideas about theatres?"

"Well," said Edward Henry, "I should like to meet an architect who had thoroughly got it into his head that when people pay for seats to see a play they want to be able to see it, and not just get a look at it now and then over other people's heads and round corners of boxes and things. In most theatres that I've been in, the architects seemed to think that iron pillars and wooden heads are transparent. Either that, or the architects were rascals. Same with hearing. The pit costs half a crown, and you don't pay half a crown to hear glasses rattled in a bar, or motor-omnibuses rushing down the street. I was never yet in a London theatre where the architect had really understood that what the people in the pit wanted to hear was the play, and nothing but the play."

"You're rather hard on us," said Mr. Alloyd.

"Not so hard as you are on us!" said Edward Henry. "And then draughts! I suppose you think a draught on the back of the neck is good for us! … But of course you'll say all this has nothing to do with architecture!"

"Oh, no, I sha'n't! Oh, no, I sha'n't!" exclaimed Mr. Alloyd. "I quite agree with you!"

"You do?"

"Certainly. You seem to be interested in theatres?"

"I am a bit."

"You come from the North?"

"No, I don't," said Edward Henry. Mr. Alloyd had no right to be aware that he was not a Londoner.

"I beg your pardon."

"I come from the Midlands."

"Oh! … Have you seen the Russian ballet?"

Edward Henry had not, nor heard of it. "Why?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Mr. Alloyd. "Only I saw it the night before last in Paris. You never saw such dancing. It's enchanted-enchanted! The most lovely thing I ever saw in my life. I couldn't sleep for it. Not that I ever sleep very well! I merely thought, as you were interested in theatres-and Midland people are so enterprising! … Have a cigarette?"

Edward Henry, who had begun to feel sympathetic, was somewhat repelled by these odd last remarks. After all the man, though human enough, was an utter stranger.

"No, thanks," he said. "And so you're going to put up a church here?"

"Yes."

"Well, I wonder whether you are."

He walked abruptly away under Alloyd's riddling stare, and he could almost hear the man saying, "Well, he's a queer lot, if you like."

At the corner of the site, below the spot where his electric sign was to have been, he was stopped by a well-dressed middle aged lady who bore a bundle of papers.

"Will you buy a paper for the cause?" she suggested in a pleasant, persuasive tone. "One penny."

He obeyed, and she handed him a small blue-printed periodical of which the title was, Azure, "the Organ of the New Thought Church." He glanced at it, puzzled, and then at the middle-aged lady.

"Every penny of profit goes to the Church-Building Fund," she said, as if in defence of her action.

Edward Henry burst out laughing; but it was a nervous, half-hysterical laugh that he laughed.

II

In Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, he descended from his brougham in front of the offices of Messrs. Slosson, Hodge, Budge, Slosson, Maveringham, Slosson, and Vulto, Solicitors, known in the profession by the compendious abbreviation of Slossons. Edward Henry, having been a lawyer's clerk some twenty-five years earlier, was aware of Slossons. Although on the strength of his youthful clerkship he claimed, and was admitted, to possess a very special knowledge of the law, – enough to silence argument when his opponent did not happen to be an actual solicitor, – he did not in truth possess a very special knowledge of the law, – how should he, seeing that he had only been a practitioner of shorthand? – but the fame of Slosson he positively was acquainted with! He had even written letters to the mighty Slossons.

Every lawyer and lawyer's clerk in the realm knew the greatness of Slossons, and crouched before it, and also, for the most part, impugned its righteousness with sneers. For Slossons acted for the ruling classes of England, who only get value for their money when they are buying something that they can see, smell, handle, or intimidate-such as a horse, a motor-car, a dog, or a lackey. Slossons, those crack solicitors, like the crack nerve specialists in Harley Street and the crack fortune-tellers in Bond Street, sold their invisible, inodorous, and intangible wares of advice at double, treble, or decuple their worth, according to the psychology of the customer. They were great bullies. And they were, further, great money-lenders-on behalf of their wealthier clients. In obedience to a convenient theory that it is imprudent to leave money too long in one place, they were continually calling in mortgages and re-lending the sums so collected on fresh investments, thus achieving two bills of costs on each transaction, and sometimes three, besides employing an army of valuers, surveyors, and mortgage-insurance brokers. In short, Slossons had nothing to learn about the art of self-enrichment.

Three vast motor-cars waited in front of their ancient door, and Edward Henry's hired electric vehicle was diminished to a trifle.

He began by demanding the senior partner, who was denied to him by an old clerk with a face like a stone wall. Only his brutal Midland insistence, and the mention of the important letter which he had written to the firm in the middle of the night, saved him from the ignominy of seeing no partner at all. At the end of the descending ladder of partners he clung desperately to Mr. Vulto, and he saw Mr. Vulto-a youngish and sarcastic person with blue eyes, lodged in a dark room at the back of the house. It occurred fortunately that his letter had been allotted to precisely Mr. Vulto for the purpose of being answered.

"You got my letter?" said Edward Henry cheerfully as he sat down at Mr. Vulto's flat desk on the side opposite from Mr. Vulto.

"We got it, but frankly we cannot make head or tail of it! … What option?" Mr. Vulto's manner was crudely sarcastic.

"This option!" said Edward Henry, drawing papers from his pocket and putting down the right paper in front of Mr. Vulto with an uncompromising slap.

Mr. Vulto picked up the paper with precautions, as if it were a contagion, and, assuming eye-glasses, perused it with his mouth open.

"We know nothing of this," said Mr. Vulto, and it was as though he had added, "Therefore this does not exist." He glanced with sufferance at the window, which offered a close-range view of a whitewashed wall.

"Then you weren't in the confidence of your client?"

"The late Lord Woldo?"

"Yes."

"Pardon me."

"Obviously you weren't in his confidence as regards this particular matter."

"As you say," said Mr. Vulto with frigid irony.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"Well-nothing." Mr. Vulto removed his eye-glasses and stood up.

"Well, good morning. I'll walk round to my solicitors." Edward Henry seized the option.

"That will be simpler," said Mr. Vulto. Slossons much preferred to deal with lawyers than with laymen, because it increased costs and vitalised the profession.

At that moment a stout, red-faced, and hoary man puffed very authoritatively into the room.

"Vulto," he cried sharply, "Mr. Wrissell's here. Didn't they tell you?"

"Yes, Mr. Slosson," answered Vulto, suddenly losing all his sarcastic quality and becoming a very junior partner. "I was just engaged with Mr. – " (he paused to glance at his desk) – "Machin, whose singular letter we received this morning about an alleged option on the lease of the chapel-site at Piccadilly Circus-the Woldo estate, sir. You remember, sir?"

"This the man?" enquired Mr. Slosson, ex-president of the Law Society, with a jerk of the thumb.

Edward Henry said: "This is the man."

"Well," said Mr. Slosson, lifting his chin and still puffing, "it would be extremely interesting to hear his story, at any rate. I was just telling Mr. Wrissell about it. Come this way, sir. I've heard some strange things in my time, but-" He stopped. "Please follow me, sir," he ordained.

"I'm dashed if I'll follow you!" Edward Henry desired to say, but he had not the courage to say it. And because he was angry with himself he determined to make matters as unpleasant as possible for the innocent Mr. Slosson, who was used to bullying, and so well paid for bullying, that really no blame could be apportioned to him. It would have been as reasonable to censure an ordinary person for breathing as to censure Mr. Slosson for bullying. And so Edward Henry was steeling himself: "I'll do him in the eye for that, even if it costs me every cent I've got." (A statement characterised by poetical licence!)

III

Mr. Slosson, senior, heard Edward Henry's story, but seemingly did not find it quite as interesting as he had prophesied it would be. When Edward Henry had finished the old man drummed on an enormous table, and said:

"Yes, yes. And then?" His manner was far less bullying than in the room of Mr. Vulto.

"It's your turn now, Mr. Slosson," said Edward Henry.

"My turn? How?"

"To go on with the story." He glanced at the clock. "I've brought it up to date-eleven fifteen o'clock this morning, anno domini." And as Mr. Slosson continued to drum on the table and to look out of the window, Edward Henry also drummed on the table and looked out of the window.

The chamber of the senior partner was a very different matter from Mr. Vulto's. It was immense. It was not disfigured by japanned boxes inartistically lettered in white, as are most lawyers' offices. Indeed, in aspect it resembled one of the cosier rooms in a small and decaying but still comfortable club. It had easy chairs and cigar-boxes. Moreover, the sun got into it, and there was a view of the comic yet stately Victorian Gothic of the Law Courts. The sun enheartened Edward Henry. And he felt secure in an unimpugnable suit of clothes; in the shape of his collar, the colour of his necktie, the style of his creaseless boots; and in the protuberance of his pocketbook in his pocket.

As Mr. Slosson had failed to notice the competition of his drumming, he drummed still louder. Whereupon Mr. Slosson stopped drumming. Edward Henry gazed amiably around. Right at the back of the room, before a back window that gave on the whitewashed wall, a man was rapidly putting his signature to a number of papers. But Mr. Slosson had ignored the existence of this man, treating him apparently as a figment of the disordered brain, or as an optical illusion.

"I've nothing to say," said Mr. Slosson.

"Or to do?"

"Or to do."

"Well, Mr. Slosson," said Edward Henry, "your junior partner has already outlined your policy of masterly inactivity. So I may as well go. I did say I'd go to my solicitors; but it's occurred to me that as I'm a principal I may as well first of all see the principals on the other side. I only came here because it mentions in the option that the matter is to be completed here; that's all."

"You a principal!" exclaimed Mr. Slosson. "It seems to me you're a long way removed from a principal. The alleged option is given to a Miss Rose Euclid."

"Excuse me-the Miss Rose Euclid."

"Miss Rose Euclid. She divides up her alleged interest into fractions and sells them here and there, and you buy them up one after another." Mr. Slosson laughed, not unamiably. "You're a principal about five times removed."

"Well," said Edward Henry, "whatever I am, I have a sort of idea I'll go and see this Mr. Gristle or Wrissell. Can you-"

The man at the distant desk turned his head. Mr. Slosson coughed. The man rose.

"This is Mr. Wrissell," said Mr. Slosson with a gesture from which confusion was not absent.

"Good morning," said the advancing Mr. Rollo Wrissell, and he said it with an accent more Kensingtonian than any accent that Edward Henry had ever heard. His lounging and yet elegant walk assorted well with the accent. His black clothes were loose and untidy. Such boots as his could not have been worn by Edward Henry even in the Five Towns without blushing shame, and his necktie looked as if a baby or a puppy had been playing with it. Nevertheless, these shortcomings made absolutely no difference whatever to the impressiveness of Mr. Rollo Wrissell, who was famous for having said once: "I put on whatever comes to hand first, and people don't seem to mind."

Mr. Rollo Wrissell belonged to one of the seven great families which once governed-and, by the way, still do govern-England, Scotland, and Ireland. The members of these families may be divided into two species: those who rule, and those who are too lofty in spirit even to rule-those who exist. Mr. Rollo Wrissell belonged to the latter species. His nose and mouth had the exquisite refinement of the descendant of generations of art-collectors and poet-patronisers. He enjoyed life, but not with rude activity, like the grosser members of the ruling caste, rather with a certain rare languor. He sniffed and savoured the whole spherical surface of the apple of life with those delicate nostrils rather than bit into it. His one conviction was that in a properly managed world nothing ought to occur to disturb or agitate the perfect tranquillity of his existing. And this conviction was so profound, so visible even in his lightest gesture and glance, that it exerted a mystic influence over the entire social organism, with the result that practically nothing ever did occur to disturb or agitate the perfect tranquillity of Mr. Rollo Wrissell's existing. For Mr. Rollo Wrissell the world was indeed almost ideal.