The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure

"I only want to know for certain who is the head," said Edward Henry, "because I mean to invite the head of the theatrical profession to lay the corner-stone of my new theatre."

"Ah!"

"When do you start on your world's tour, Sir John?"

"I leave Tilbury with my entire company, scenery and effects, on the morning of Tuesday week, by the Kandahar. I shall play first in Cairo."

"How awkward!" said Edward Henry. "I meant to ask you to lay the stone on the very next afternoon-Wednesday, that is!"

"Indeed!"

"Yes, Sir John. The ceremony will be a very original affair-very original!"

"A foundation-stone-laying!" mused Sir John. "But if you're already up to the first floor, how can you be laying the foundation-stone on Wednesday week?"

"I didn't say foundation-stone. I said corner-stone," Edward Henry corrected him. "An entire novelty! That's why we can't be ready before Wednesday week."

"And you want to advertise your house by getting the head of the profession to assist?"

"That is exactly my idea."

"Well," said Sir John. "Whatever else you may lack, Mr. Alderman, you are not lacking in nerve, if you expect to succeed in that."

Edward Henry smiled.

"I have already heard, in a round-about way," he replied, "that Sir Gerald Pompey would not be unwilling to officiate. My only difficulty is that I'm a truthful man by nature. Whoever officiates, I shall of course have to have him labelled, in my own interests, as the head of the theatrical profession, and I don't want to say anything that isn't true."

There was a pause.

"Now, Sir John, couldn't you stay a day or two longer in London and join the ship at Marseilles instead of going on board at Tilbury?"

"But I have made all my arrangements. The whole world knows that I am going on board at Tilbury."

Just then the door opened and a servant announced:

"Mr. Carlo Trent."

Sir John Pilgrim rushed like a locomotive to the threshold and seized both Carlo Trent's hands with such a violence of welcome that Carlo Trent's eyeglass fell out of his eye and the purple ribbon dangled to his waist.

"Come in, come in!" said Sir John. "And begin to read at once. I've been looking out of the window for you for the last quarter of an hour. Alderman, this is Mr. Carlo Trent, the well-known dramatic poet. Trent, this is one of the greatest geniuses in London… Ah! You know each other? It's not surprising! No, don't stop to shake hands. Sit down here, Trent. Sit down on this chair… Here, Snip, take his hat. Worry it! Worry it! Now, Trent, don't read to me. It might make you nervous and hurried. Read to Miss Taft and Chung, and to Mr. Givington over there. Imagine that they are the great and enlightened public. You have imagination, haven't you, being a poet?"

Sir John had accomplished the change of mood with the rapidity of a transformation-scene-in which form of art, by the way, he was a great adept.

Carlo Trent, somewhat breathless, took a manuscript from his pocket, opened it, and announced: "The Orient Pearl."

"Oh!" breathed Edward Henry.

For some thirty minutes Edward Henry listened to hexameters, the first he had ever heard. The effect of them on his moral organism was worse even than he had expected. He glanced about at the other auditors. Givington had opened a box of tubes and was spreading colours on his palette. The Chinaman's eyes were closed while his face still grinned. Snip was asleep on the parquet. Miss Taft bit the end of a pencil with her agreeable teeth. Sir John Pilgrim lay at full length on a sofa, occasionally lifting his legs. Edward Henry despaired of help in his great need. But just as his desperation was becoming too acute to be borne, Carlo Trent ejaculated the word "Curtain." It was the first word that Edward Henry had clearly understood.

"That's the first act," said Carlo Trent, wiping his face. Snip awakened.

Edward Henry rose and, in the hush, tiptoed round the sofa.

"Good-bye, Sir John," he whispered.

"You're not going?"

"I am, Sir John."

The head of his profession sat up. "How right you are!" said he. "How right you are. Trent, I knew from the first words it wouldn't do. It lacks colour. I want something more crimson, more like the brighter parts of this jacket, something-" He waved hands in the air. "The alderman agrees with me. He's going. Don't trouble to read any more, Trent. But drop in any time-any time. Chung, what o'clock is it?"

"It is nearly noon," said Edward Henry in the tone of an old friend. "Well, I'm sorry you can't oblige me, Sir John. I'm off to see Sir Gerald Pompey now."

"But who says I can't oblige you?" protested Sir John. "Who knows what sacrifices I would not make in the highest interests of the profession? Alderman, you jump to conclusions with the agility of an acrobat, but they are false conclusions! Miss Taft, the telephone! Chung, my coat! Good-bye, Trent, good-bye!"

An hour later Edward Henry met Mr. Marrier at the Grand Babylon Hotel.

"Well, sir," said Mr. Marrier, "you are the greatest man that ever lived!"

"Why?"

Mr. Marrier showed him the stop-press news of a penny evening paper, which read: "Sir John Pilgrim has abandoned his ceremonious departure from Tilbury in order to lay the corner-stone of the new Regent Theatre on Wednesday week. He and Miss Cora Pryde will join the Kandahar at Marseilles."

"You needn't do any advertaysing," said Mr. Marrier. "Pilgrim will do all the advertaysing for you."

III

Edward Henry and Mr. Marrier worked together admirably that afternoon on the arrangements for the corner-stone-laying. And-such was the interaction of their separate enthusiasms-it soon became apparent that all London (in the only right sense of the word "all") must and would be at the ceremony. Characteristically, Mr. Marrier happened to have a list or catalogue of all London in his pocket, and Edward Henry appreciated him more than ever. But towards four o'clock Mr. Marrier annoyed and even somewhat alarmed Edward Henry by a mysterious change of mien. His assured optimism slipped away from him. He grew uneasy, darkly preoccupied, and inefficient. At last when the clock in the room struck four, and Edward Henry failed to hear it, Mr. Marrier said:

"I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse me now."

"Why?"

"I told you I had an appointment for tea at four."

"Did you? What is it?" Edward Henry demanded with an employer's instinctive assumption that souls as well as brains can be bought for such sums as three pounds a week.

"I have a lady coming to tea, here; that is, downstairs."

"In this hotel?"

"Yes."

"Who is it?" Edward Henry pursued lightly, for though he appreciated Mr. Marrier, he also despised him. However, he found the grace to add: "May one ask?"

"It's Miss Elsie April."

"Do you mean to say, Marrier," complained Edward Henry, "that you've known Miss Elsie April all these months and never told me? … There aren't two, I suppose? It's the cousin or something of Rose Euclid?"

Mr. Marrier nodded. "The fact is," he said, "she and I are joint honorary organising secretaries for the annual conference of the Azure Society. You know, it leads the New Thought movement in England."

"You never told me that either."

"Didn't I, sir? I didn't think it would interest you. Besides, both Miss April and I are comparatively new members."

"Oh!" said Edward Henry with all the canny provincial's conviction of his own superior shrewdness; and he repeated, so as to intensify this conviction and impress it on others, "Oh!" In the undergrowth of his mind was the thought: "How dare this man, whose brains belong to me, be the organising secretary of something that I don't know anything about and don't want to know anything about?"

"Yes," said Mr. Marrier modestly.

"I say," Edward Henry enquired warmly, with an impulsive gesture, "who is she?"

"Who is she?" repeated Mr. Marrier blankly.

"Yes. What does she do?"

"Doesn't do anything," said Mr. Marrier. "Very good amateur actress. Goes about a great deal. Her mother was on the stage. Married a wealthy wholesale corset-maker."

"Who did? Miss April?" Edward Henry had a twinge.

"No; her mother. Both parents are dead, and Miss April has an income-a considerable income."

"What do you call considerable?"

"Five or six thousand a year."

"The deuce!" murmured Edward Henry.

"May have lost a bit of it, of course," Mr. Marrier hedged. "But not much, not much!"

"Well," said Edward Henry, smiling. "What about my tea? Am I to have tea all by myself?"

"Will you come down and meet her?" Mr. Marrier's expression approached the wistful.

"Well," said Edward Henry, "it's an idea, isn't it? Why should I be the only person in London who doesn't know Miss Elsie April?"

It was ten minutes past four when they descended into the electric publicity of the Grand Babylon. Amid the music and the rattle of crockery and the gliding waiters and the large nodding hats that gathered more and more thickly round the tables, there was no sign of Elsie April.

"She may have been and gone away again," said Edward Henry, apprehensive.

"Oh, no! She wouldn't go away." Mr. Marrier was positive.

In the tone of a man with an income of two hundred pounds a week he ordered a table to be prepared for three.

At ten minutes to five he said:

"I hope she hasn't been and gone away again!"

Edward Henry began to be gloomy and resentful. The crowded and factitious gaiety of the place actually annoyed him. If Elsie April had been and gone away again, he objected to such silly feminine conduct. If she was merely late, he equally objected to such unconscionable inexactitude. He blamed Mr. Marrier. He considered that he had the right to blame Mr. Marrier because he paid him three pounds a week. And he very badly wanted his tea.

Then their four eyes, which for forty minutes had scarcely left the entrance staircase, were rewarded. She came in furs, gleaming white kid gloves, gold chains, a gold bag, and a black velvet hat.

"I'm not late, am I?" she said after the introduction.

"No," they both replied. And they both meant it. For she was like fine weather. The forty minutes of waiting were forgotten, expunged from the records of time, just as the memory of a month of rain is obliterated by one splendid sunny day.

IV

Edward Henry enjoyed the tea, which was bad, to an extraordinary degree. He became uplifted in the presence of Miss Elsie April; whereas Mr. Marrier, strangely, drooped to still deeper depths of unaccustomed inert melancholy. Edward Henry decided that she was every bit as piquant, challenging, and delectable as he had imagined her to be on the day when he ate an artichoke at the next table to hers at Wilkins's. She coincided exactly with his remembrance of her, except that she was now slightly more plump. Her contours were effulgent-there was no other word. Beautiful she was not, for she had a turned-up nose; but what charm she radiated! Every movement and tone enchanted Edward Henry. He was enchanted not at intervals, by a chance gesture, but all the time-when she was serious, when she smiled, when she fingered her teacup, when she pushed her furs back over her shoulders, when she spoke of the weather, when she spoke of the social crisis, and when she made fun, with a certain brief absence of restraint, rather in her artichoke manner of making fun.

He thought and believed:

"This is the finest woman I ever saw!" He clearly perceived the inferiority of other women, whom nevertheless he admired and liked, such as the Countess of Chell and Lady Woldo.

It was not her brains, nor her beauty, nor her stylishness that affected him. No! It was something mysterious and dizzying that resided in every particle of her individuality.

He thought:

"I've often and often wanted to see her again. And now I'm having tea with her!" And he was happy.

"Have you got that list, Mr. Marrier?" she asked in her low and thrilling voice. So saying, she raised her eyebrows in expectation-a delicious effect, especially behind her half-raised white veil.

Mr. Marrier produced a document.

"But that's my list!" said Edward Henry.

"Your list?"

"I'd better tell you." Mr. Marrier essayed a rapid explanation. "Mr. Machin wanted a list of the raight sort of people to ask to the corner-stone-laying of his theatah. So I used this as a basis."

Elsie April smiled again. "Ve-ry good!" she approved.

"What is your list, Marrier?" asked Edward Henry.

It was Elsie who replied:

"People to be invited to the dramatic soirée of the Azure Society. We give six a year. No title is announced. Nobody except a committee of three knows even the name of the author of the play that is to be performed. Everything is kept a secret. Even the author doesn't know that his play has been chosen. Don't you think it's a delightful idea? … An offspring of the New Thought!"

He agreed that it was a delightful idea.

"Shall I be invited?" he asked.

She answered gravely: "I don't know."

"Are you going to play in it?"

She paused… "Yes."

"Then you must let me come. Talking of plays-"

He stopped. He was on the edge of facetiously relating the episode of "The Orient Pearl" at Sir John Pilgrim's; but he withdrew in time. Suppose that "The Orient Pearl" was the piece to be performed by the Azure Society! It might well be. It was (in his opinion) just the sort of play that that sort of society would choose. Nevertheless he was as anxious as ever to see Elsie April act. He really thought that she could and would transfigure any play. Even his profound scorn of New Thought (a subject of which he was entirely ignorant) began to be modified-and by nothing but the enchantment of the tone in which Elsie April murmured the words, "Azure Society!"

"How soon is the performance?" he demanded.

"Wednesday week," said she.

"That's the very day of my corner-stone-laying," he said. "However, it doesn't matter. My little affair will be in the afternoon."

"But it can't be," said she solemnly. "It would interfere with us, and we should interfere with it. Our annual conference takes place in the afternoon. All London will be there."

Said Mr. Marrier rather shamefaced:

"That's just it, Mr. Machin. It positively never occurred to me that the Azure Conference is to be on that very day. I never thought of it until nearly four o'clock. And then I scarcely knew how to explain it to you. I really don't know how it escaped me."

Mr. Marrier's trouble was now out, and he had declined in Edward Henry's esteem. Mr. Marrier was afraid of him. Mr. Marrier's list of personages was no longer a miracle of foresight; it was a mere coincidence. He doubted if Mr. Marrier was worth even his three pounds a week. Edward Henry began to feel ruthless, Napoleonic. He was capable of brushing away the whole Azure Society and New Thought movement into limbo.

"You must please alter your date," said Elsie April. And she put her right elbow on the table and leaned her chin on it, and thus somehow established a domestic intimacy for the three amid all the blare and notoriety of the vast tea-room.

"Oh, but I can't!" he said easily, familiarly. It was her occasional "artichoke" manner that had justified him in assuming this tone. "I can't!" he repeated. "I've told Sir John I can't possibly be ready any earlier, and on the day after he'll almost certainly be on his way to Marseilles. Besides, I don't want to alter my date. My date is in the papers by this time."

"You've already done quite enough harm to the movement as it is," said Elsie April stoutly but ravishingly.

"Me-harm to the movement?"

"Haven't you stopped the building of our church?"

"Oh! So you know Mr. Wrissell?"

"Very well indeed."

"Anybody else would have done the same in my place," Edward Henry defended himself. "Your cousin, Miss Euclid, would have done it, and Marrier here was in the affair with her."

"Ah!" exclaimed Elsie April. "But we didn't belong to the movement then! We didn't know… Come now, Mr. Machin. Sir John Pilgrim will of course be a great show. But even if you've got him and manage to stick to him, we should beat you. You'll never get the audience you want if you don't change from Wednesday week. After all, the number of people who count in London is very small. And we've got nearly all of them. You've no idea-"

"I won't change from Wednesday week," said Edward Henry. This defiance of her put him into an extremely agitated felicity.

"Now, my dear Mr. Machin-"

He was actually aware of the charm she was exerting, and yet he discovered that he could easily withstand it.

"Now, my dear Miss April, please don't try to take advantage of your beauty!"

She sat up. She was apparently measuring herself and him.

"Then you won't change the day, truly?" Her urbanity was in no wise impaired.

"I won't," he laughed lightly. "I dare say you aren't used to people like me, Miss April."

(She might get the better of Seven Sachs, but not of him, Edward Henry Machin from the Five Towns!)

"Marrier," said he suddenly, with a bluff humorous downrightness, "you know you're in a very awkward position here, and you know you've got to see Alloyd for me before six o'clock. Be off with you. I will be responsible for Miss April."

("I'll show these Londoners!" he said to himself. "It's simple enough when you once get into it.")

And he did in fact succeed in dismissing Mr. Marrier, after the latter had talked Azure business with Miss April for a couple of minutes.

"I must go, too," said Elsie, imperturbable, impenetrable.

"One moment," he entreated, and masterfully signalled Marrier to depart. After all, he was paying the fellow three pounds a week.

She watched Marrier thread his way out. Already she had put on her gloves.

"I must go," she repeated, her rich red lips then closed definitely.

"Have you a motor here?" Edward Henry asked.

"No."

"Then, if I may, I'll see you home."

"You may," she said, gazing full at him.

Whereby he was somewhat startled and put out of countenance.

V

"Are we friends?" he asked roguishly.

"I hope so," she said, with no diminution of her inscrutability.

They were in a taxicab, rolling along the Embankment towards the Buckingham Palace Hotel, where she said she lived. He was happy. "Why am I happy?" he thought. "What is there in her that makes me happy?" He did not know. But he knew that he had never been in a taxicab, or anywhere else, with any woman half so elegant. Her elegance flattered him enormously. Here he was, a provincial man of business, ruffling it with the best of them! … And she was young in her worldly maturity. Was she twenty-seven? She could not be more. She looked straight in front of her, faintly smiling… Yes, he was fully aware that he was a married man. He had a distinct vision of the angelic Nellie, of the three children, and of his mother. But it seemed to him that his own case differed in some very subtle and yet effective manner from the similar case of any other married man. And he lived, unharassed by apprehensions, in the lively joy of the moment.

"But," she said, "I hope you won't come to see me act."

"Why?"

"Because I should prefer you not to. You would not be sympathetic to me."

"Oh, yes, I should."

"I shouldn't feel it so." And then with a swift disarrangement of all the folds of her skirt she turned and faced him. "Mr. Machin, do you know why I've let you come with me?"

"Because you're a good-natured woman," he said.

She grew even graver, shaking her head.

"No! I simply wanted to tell you that you've ruined Rose, my cousin."

"Miss Euclid? Me ruined Miss Euclid?"

"Yes. You robbed her of her theatre-her one chance."

He blushed. "Excuse me," he said, "I did no such thing. I simply bought her option from her. She was absolutely free to keep the option or let it go."

"The fact remains," said Elsie April, with humid eyes, "the fact remains that she'd set her heart on having that theatre, and you failed her at the last instant. And she has nothing, and you've got the theatre entirely in your own hands. I'm not so silly as to suppose that you can't defend yourself legally. But let me tell you that Rose went to the United States heart-broken, and she's playing to empty houses there-empty houses! Whereas she might have been here in London, interested in her theatre, and preparing for a successful season."

"I'd no idea of this," breathed Edward Henry. He was dashed. "I'm awfully sorry!"

"Yes, no doubt. But there it is!"

Silence fell. He knew not what to say. He felt himself in one way innocent, but he felt himself in another way blackly guilty. His remorse for the telephone-trick which he had practised on Rose Euclid burst forth again after a long period of quiescence simulating death, and actually troubled him… No, he was not guilty! He insisted in his heart that he was not guilty! And yet-and yet-

No taxicab ever travelled so quickly as that taxi-cab. Before he could gather together his forces it had arrived beneath the awning of the Buckingham Palace Hotel.

His last words to her were:

"Now, I sha'nt change the day of my stone-laying. But don't worry about your conference. You know it'll be perfectly all right." He spoke archly, with a brave attempt at cajolery; but in the recesses of his soul he was not sure that she had not defeated him in this their first encounter. However, Seven Sachs might talk as he chose-she was not such a persuasive creature as all that! She had scarcely even tried to be persuasive.

At about a quarter-past six, when he saw his underling again, he said to Mr. Marrier:

"Marrier, I've got a great idea. We'll have that corner-stone-laying at night. After the theatres. Say half-past eleven. Torchlight! Fireworks from the cranes! It'll tickle old Pilgrim to death. I shall have a marquee with match-boarding sides fixed up inside, and heat it with a few of those smokeless stoves. We can easily lay on electricity. It will be absolutely the most sensational stone-laying that ever was. It'll be in all the papers all over the blessed world. Think of it! Torches! Fireworks from the cranes! … But I won't change the day-neither for Miss April nor anybody else."

Mr. Marrier dissolved in laudations.

"Well," Edward Henry agreed with false diffidence, "it'll knock spots off some of 'em in this town!"

He felt that he had snatched victory out of defeat. But the next moment he was capable of feeling that Elsie April had defeated him even in his victory. Anyhow, she was a most disconcerting and fancy-monopolising creature.

There was one source of unsullied gratification: he had shaved off his beard.

VI

"Come up here, Sir John," Edward Henry called. "You'll see better, and you'll be out of the crowd. And I'll show you something."

He stood, in a fur coat, at the top of a short flight of rough-surfaced steps between two unplastered walls-a staircase which ultimately was to form part of an emergency exit from the dress-circle of the Regent Theatre. Sir John Pilgrim, also in a fur coat, stood near the bottom of the steps, with a glare of a Wells light full on him and throwing his shadow almost up to Edward Henry's feet. Around, Edward Henry could descry the vast mysterious forms of the building's skeleton-black in places, but in other places lit up by bright rays from the gaiety below, and showing glimpses of that gaiety in the occasional revelation of a woman's cloak through slits in the construction. High overhead, two gigantic cranes interlaced their arms; and even higher than the cranes, shone the stars of the clear spring night.

The hour was nearly half-past twelve. The ceremony was concluded-and successfully concluded. All London had indeed been present. Half the aristocracy of England, and far more than half the aristocracy of the London stage! The entire preciosity of the metropolis! Journalists with influence enough to plunge the whole of Europe into war! In one short hour Edward Henry's right hand (peeping out from the superb fur coat which he had had the wit to buy) had made the acquaintance of scores upon scores of the most celebrated right hands in Britain. He had the sensation that in future, whenever he walked about the best streets of the West End, he would be continually compelled to stop and chat with august and renowned acquaintances, and that he would always be taking off his hat to fine ladies who flashed by nodding from powerful motor-cars. Indeed, Edward Henry was surprised at the number of famous people who seemed to have nothing to do but attend advertising rituals at midnight or thereabouts. Sir John Pilgrim had, as Marrier predicted, attended to the advertisements. But Edward Henry had helped. And on the day itself the evening newspapers had taken the bit between their teeth and run off with the affair at a great pace. The affair was on all the contents-bills hours before it actually happened. Edward Henry had been interviewed several times, and had rather enjoyed that. Gradually he had perceived that his novel idea for a corner-stone-laying had caught the facile imagination of the London populace. For that night at least he was famous-as famous as anybody!